‘Am I next?’ has become ‘When am I next?’

Gauteng has been uncharacteristically cold over the past two weeks.

The result of this is that there has been a high demand for gas by households like mine that use gas heaters and stoves.

But finding gas has been a Herculean task.

Some time during last week, I drove around the province for about two hours before finally finding a petrol station that had gas.

By the time I got to it, I had driven to Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg.

And it was just after midnight on a bitterly cold night.

The teller inside the petrol station directed me towards the side of the building, where I was to knock on a small door and request someone in there to exchange my empty cylinder for a full one.

I went around, as instructed, but as soon I knocked on that door panic set in.

Standing before me was a middle-aged man who looked like I had woken him up from sleep.

But even in that state of mild dishevelment, he still managed to look menacing.

I was paralysed as I stood there, alone, facing a man who in my mind was my potential rapist and murderer.

Sensing my discomfort, he attempted to put me at ease. But it was impossible.

I was terrified and nothing he could have said or done would have convinced me that I was not in any immediate danger.

I only breathed a sigh of relief once I was safely back inside my car and on the highway heading towards my house.

It was not the first time I had felt that terrified in a public space.

Over the past few months I have been growing increasingly fearful of being in public spaces on my own — and the time of day is insignificant because the gnawing sense of dread is as palpable in the middle of the day as it is at night.

Lockdown regulations also mean there are fewer people on the streets and in public areas, and so the fear is compounded by the thought that there would be fewer witnesses than usual should anything happen to me.

And just to be clear about this, I work for a municipality, and as an essential worker am sometimes expected to be in the office.

I rue the days when my head of department sends me messages requesting that I be in the office, because that means leaving the relative safety of my house, in a relatively secure and highly patrolled neighbourhood, to spend the day in a building where strangers come in and out.

Members of the community often visit our offices seeking assistance, and so there are always people in the building who, in my mind, are my potential rapists and murderers.

And none dare say one is being alarmist for thinking that so heinous a crime could happen inside a municipal building, for Uyinene Mrwetyana was brutally raped and killed inside a government building, just as Thembisile Yende’s body was found in Eskom offices not too far from where my own office is located.

It happens. Women are violated in spaces that one would imagine they would be most protected.

The reality of the situation is that I am not the only woman in SA who lives with the crippling fear that I will one day be raped or murdered.

This is what it means to be a woman in this country that appears to hate women.

This is what our existence has come to look like.

We are in a permanent state of fear and anxiety about our safety.

Every man everywhere appears to us like a potential perpetrator.

This kind of abnormal existence has become normalised in our country — we are afraid of men.

We are afraid to die.

In 2019, after the spate of rapes and murders of young women, we were all asking ourselves, “Am I next?”

But increasingly, with the rapes and killings going unabated, we are asking a different question, “When am I next? ”— because it is far more likely than not that we are indeed next.

It is far more likely than not that the next missing-person poster you will see circulating on social media will be of Malaika or another woman — a woman whose body is likely to be found in a ditch or, just as savagely, hanging from a tree.