Why vote when women are not safe?

THE elections are 11 days away and the political parties are hitting the campaign trail hard in an attempt to persuade South Africans to vote for them.

We know the majorityregistered voters are young people and among them are young women who are unemployed; who are victims and survivors of rape, sexual harassment, sexual assault and domestic violence.

They are the young women who led the Rhodes Reference list movement who are yet to get justice, they are the young women at Rhodes, Fort Hare, UCT, UJ and Wits universities who are subjected to sexual violations for them to get good marks and pass their exams or courses.

They are the young women who must walk the Mandela Bridge every day to and from university, running the risk of being abducted, raped and/ or sexually harassed.

They are the young women who use taxis and are often sexually harassed and sexually violated by the users and/or drivers of these taxis. They are the young women in the TVET colleges who are victims of sexual violence and their voices are not heard because of the status their colleges occupy in the education strata. They are the young women who are slut-shamed for raising their voices against patriarchy, sexism, toxic masculinity and misogyny.

They are the young women who were promised and believed that views about women that have governed our lives were changing. We live in a country in which women’s rights are still secondary to political games. Political men love to talk about the scourge of violence against women and girls but are not willing to recognise that the war against women is at home, in the streets, and in the workplace.

It is the men up on the podium rallying crowds, it is the men who lead, it is the men who speak and such has been the experience of women that it feels normal. Why vote for these parties ed by men who are not brave to call out a rapist within their midst or demand justice for a woman who is sexually violated.

Why did we not hear their loud voices in their condemnation of Pule Mabe or Danny Jordaan, or register their support of the many victims of sexual harassment? Why are they still silent in demanding justice for the women who have died at the hands of the male partners and the many men whose names did not make it to the headline news?

How about the leaders of these political parties pause and reflect on: The treatment of women and especially young women and stop with shouting empty slogans.

Why a clinic or a hospital has run out of rape kits.

Why a policeman destroys a docket or refuses to take a statement from a women lodging a charge of rape or assault.

Once done with the reflections, then tell the young women why they should be voting for them instead of advancing this patriarchal interest and machismo.

We also call on young women to ask the same question, #YVote4U.