Wednesday, 4 September 2019- University of Cape Town, South Africa
I stand here as a grandmother to Uyinene, a grandmother in pain, and I can see and feel in everyone of us here, there is so much pain in the air. We are all wounded, some of us are extremely angry, others are confused, others are asking questions. One thing in common is, we all are in pain. This child has left us, and I can say we do fear that she took a little bit of each one of us. It is not only pain, it is not only anger, it is also a sense of loss, of feeling that we are no longer who we were before she was taken from us. But Uyinene, I think in the presence of all of you, has to remain. She has to be in our hearts, in our minds. Am not saying to not let her go in the sense of giving her rest. But am saying this should not be just one beautiful celebration. I must say since I have been chancellor of UCT, I have never seen such a beautiful gathering like this, and this has to mean something. For her to remain with us it means each and every one of us here has to pledge to do something to make of this country of ours, a country which is safe.
We heard herd, Uyinene was not abducted on campus, she was at the post office, she could have been in the mall, she could have been simply walking, sh could have been anywhere in the public space or even in a private space. Our reality is that we are a society that women and children are not safe anywhere, something absolutely deeply wrong is happening in our society.
Yes universities will take measures to make sure that students and everyone at the university is safe, we will do that, it is our responsibility, the minister said we will work on all campuses and we will do everything we can, the government and the police, but the problem is not the consequences of what is happening, it is the root causes of why and how we got to this point of where we are as a society, that the question which these deaths, more than any, and it happened here, within the institution that is considered to be one of the best institutions in the country, the best institution in Africa.
It has to begin here, to ask the hard questions, and more importantly, to contribute to finding answers which are going to contribute, [sic] for government to take responsibility in making our society safe, to make our children safe, all of them, without any exceptions.
I am over 70 years old, I started my struggle in my twenties, I had high dreams about my country and my Africa, then I get to this age where am now planning to go somewhere where I think I will have real peace… and you say, what has happened? Where did we fail? How do we start to rebuild the social fabrics of our societies. Where do we start and how?
I want to make a pledge, Vice Chancellor, perhaps its Ruth that am making this pledge when am leaving and Precious is the one that is going to take over, but because we have here some of the best, very best social scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, you name it, they are here. In the name of this child [sic Uyinene] we have to start a programme in which we really interrogate the real causes of where we are, and how we got to this point. We have to join hands with other institutions and ask the questions: What is happening? Why is that our families are nurturing murderers and rapists? It is in our families, It is not in our classes. What is it which has gone so wrong? Yes we could say there are people who have suffered the same kind of gruesome death like Uyinene in the privacy of their homes.
If we are here in solidarity, with this beauty of unity, in our pain, we have to pledge to do something. The universities will do, it will find its own ways. The minister is here he made some pledges, we really have to sit down and do something which we can be accountable for.
I hope this can also help if I can tell you… I am a mother of a girl who lost an eye to gender-based violence. Beautiful girl, she had beautiful eyes, the best thing I liked in her face, then someone, like the rapist, raised his hand against her. Let me tell you the kind of a girl she is, in my pain and crying, she came to me and said, “you know mum, we are lucky”, I said, what do you mean we are lucky? She said “yes, we are lucky because I am alive. Am here, I have one eye, I can see you and I can see my children, I may have succumbed died instantly, so we are lucky”.
Am so pained that Uyinene was not lucky like my child, because she would be standing here on this campus, she could have been one of those champions, as you say she was so infectious in her energy, and love, she would have continued to do this. I am feeling like we don’t simply just have to be overwhelmed by our pain, we have to commit.
Girls, all of you here, you have to reflect on how you need to protect each other. It has to start here, [sic] if you need to learn how to walk, where and at what time, places where you should never be alone, you have to decide on how you reorganise your routine on campus in order to protect one another. Yes, we can have the police, and some kind of protection but this protection has to start with each one of you, two of you, three of you, ten of you, all of you together, we cannot succumb to this and feel we are powerless.
Girls, sometimes we have boyfriends who are abusive, [sic] because I love him, I will forgive him. Yes, because they have been forgiven so many times, that’s exactly when they end up killing. You need to have the strength to say, the moment the signs come, get out of that relationship, and you will not do it alone, you will have your friends and your sisters to support you to say, “yes get out of that relationship, we will be with you, we will support you.”
Boys, you are here in this camp equally as the girls, to come for knowledge, [sic] to have the tools for your own life. Boys, respect girls, the same way you respect your own sister. These boys would be able to kill someone if he abused his sister but they are abusers of other sisters.
And we look at those who have a different sexual orientation from ours and we feel we are much more in the right, and they are in the wrong. There is no right and wrong in this. You are, that’s all. Let us protect one another, boys and girls, straight or not, lets protect one another and we have to learn how to do it. You do not know, I also do not know how to do it, but you have to learn to protect one another so that we are not here in our anger to say the management of the university has a lot to do. The management of the university will not be in our libraries or everywhere we go, that is why we have to protect one another. It is a mutual responsibility.
Am here, I tell you, am really in pain, and when am in the pain, am not the right person to be speaking, but what I want to say to you is this. “It is really a deeply rooted crisis of our family structures. Its where we started, we saw it happening and we have no clarity on how we nurture and educate our children to love and respect one another. And that a man is a human being, a woman is a human being, and in that they are different in their beauty, in what nature has put in them to be, that there is no criteria or value to say ‘just because you are a woman you value less’. It is in our families that this problem also has to be addressed.
Yes, it was addressed in our churches, our communities and where ever we are in the workplace.
We have to be more aggressive in naming and putting the pictures for everyone to know, because if you put the name only, the name will not tell much, make them be afraid of walking in public spaces, this is what society has to do, [sic] rapists, murderers and those who are potential murderers have to be afraid of our anger, but more importantly, afraid of our action. Isolate them.
This is what society has to do, while we are nurturing and bringing up the new ones to be the different kinds of citizens, this is a call for all South African this is not the country we fought for, this is not what we wanted for our people, to be afraid and to look over their shoulders when they move around. We have the power and the capacity to change this.
We really have to move from ceremonies of celebrations and commitments but nothing happens. Remember the incident of Karabo Mokoena, the nation was shaken as we are today, did it change much? Last year, out of the anger [sic] demanded civil society organisations, government, the president and parliamentarians, yes there are policies, but policies don’t change, Actions change. This is what we have to do, it will take the responsibility all of us, it is not the responsibility of some of us, it will not help if we start pointing fingers, we have to take responsibility at different levels.
I want to finish by saying, all of you, you are my children, and some of you, my grandchildren because you are so young, and it is with so much love, but at the same time, with so much pain, I want you to leave and to leave long, I want you to leave with no fear, I want you to leave while you are able to exercise the huge potential that you have, this is your country, this is your society, you have to become agents of making this society healthy, in which all of us, and am saying this to my children, to my grandchildren, make of this country, of this society, of the whole continent, you have the power to take responsibility.
Follow link to listen to speech – https://youtu.be/9wPTflwu6W0
University of Cape Town South Africa
The Trust supports and mobilises civil society networks on issues of ending child marriage, ending violence against children, ending female genital mutilation and promoting children’s rights, to carry out advocacy and action across Africa. Special focus is placed on Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia where child marriage continues to be a problem largely driven by poverty, gender inequality, harmful traditional practices, conflict, low levels of literacy, limited opportunities for girls and weak or non-existent protective and preventive legal frameworks.
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