Dear Mr President.
I don't know how to start this letter and I don't know how I'm feeling right now.
When we got news that we have a new president, we were grateful and felt a sense of hope that many changes are to come. I'm not referring to money, jobs, education but the safety of our children and ourselves.
I'm from cape Town. The place where a female goes missing, raped and killed only for the president to visit their house and say "I'm sorry". What does that even mean? You're sorry up until the next female is gone? What then? What happens when the next one goes missing. Yes most of the time it's by someone known to the family but nothing stops that family from hurting.
Let me put it to you this way and I do apologize for making this example but you have daughters. Grown daughters. Last year and the year before so many little girls went missing and found dead, thereafter it was grown woman. Murdered by someone from the post office, by someone who lives in the same complex and so it continued. What if one of your daughters had come across this? Would you then open your eyes?
I fear for my sisters. I fear for my mother. I fear for my neighbour's and nieces. I fear for my work colleagues. I fear for South Africa. The country who has no choice but to put their trust in you.
Tomorrow I have to stand at the busy stop and wait for a bus. During that time I become so fearful that everyone around me becomes suspicious. Why do I need to live in fear like this? Worried if I am next. Opening up my phone reading the news feed and there it is. Another girl missing, raped, killed and found.
Is this what it is to be a woman in South Africa. Was I raised to being a victim and subject of abuse? You have the power Mr President. Listen to these cries. See how these parents of all those that are gone in pain! Do you know how it feels to wake up to news that your child has been found in a storm pipe? Lifeless.
Why aren't you protecting us? Do you think those people should be breathing after they just killed a little person? After they killed a women or a man? After they took away the life of someone else's child. Do you know what the police says when they catch the suspect? The suspect will remain in a single cell or is protected by the police for his own safety until a ruling has been made. Do you know why they say this? Because they know that we will MOER him. He won't see another day. An eye for an eye. We are tired because where was the police to protect that child or woman when they were suffering or being harmed?
Mr President I have two daughters. I will not allow them outside my gates because I don't want to lose them. I don't want to recieve phone calls to say their bodies has been found but I can only protect them as far as my eye can see them.
We need suspects to be afraid. Bring back the death penalty. Make an example out of them. Give us hope that proper justice will be serves. Not those Pollsmoor prisons that gives prisoners education, food, water, a warm place to sleep. While mothers and father sleep with broken hearts and dreams and an empty arm where their child was suppose to be.
Do not wait for the next case or murder Mr President. Do not wait for the next letter from a mother in pain or plead from a community begging to keep their children safe as that is all we can do. You don't want us to take justice into our own hands so then help us.
Today we hold our kids so tight against us because the reality is we don't know if we get to see them again.
Mr President, from a parent to another. Help us. Help South Africa.
Regards.
A Mother.
