An often curvaceous work of nature, titivated with boobs that resonate with her splendid morphology, sweet voiced with caring qualities of unimaginable proportions.She is my mother, our sister, their daughter and his wife. She's a woman. She's a conservationist who keeps human extinction at bay without fail. Her precious body is endowed with special organs to ensure sterile delivery of life. She's an anointed carrier of human life to earth.
I hold a woman's body in high esteem - it gave birth to me and introduced me to mother earth. I don't objectify a woman's body as an instrument for psychopathic experimentation. I subscribe neither to chauvinism nor patriarchy. I speak against misogyny.
I've always resisted temptation to call myself a feminist. In essence, a feminist is one who advocates for egalitarian status and recognition of female creatures, human or otherwise. I'm a womanist and advocate for physical protection, equality, respect and love for women - not because they're the weaker sex but, by virtue of being human. Excuse my language but, how the hell did we elevate rape to a status of "culture"? Whose culture is it anyway?
As a practising Christian, the Bible tells me that when God created a man, he consulted with the Holy Trinity. God created a woman in the silence of the earth without seeking second or third opinion from any mortal being. A woman's body demanded meticulous and uninterrupted handling. The book of Genesis doesn't caricature a woman as an embodiment of sin. I mean...why would God assign the ultimate sinner to be the bearer of his own image?
The reason for my emotional harangue is the spate of sexual attacks on women in general, and students from University of Cape Town and Rhodes University in particular. Women like Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph and Rahima Moosa fought side by side with men to bring about freedom in South Africa. Women didn't join the struggle just because they were irked by the idea of carrying passes.
They fought for freedom to bask in the beauty of their womanhood. Women were fighting for freedom to be in conversation with their cosmetic-beings without men lurking behind to attack them. Young women have been raped and sexually assaulted on campuses by would-be academics at UCT and Rhodes.
To most South African women, freedom of movement is only academic. Their dress-code and movement is at the mercy of testosterone-driven barbarians. Whether covered or not, a woman's body is not an open buffet for any Jimmy to feast on. A woman's body is not like a car taken for a test drive before final purchase. It is not a close-corporation entity or a communal property where every Dick, Tom and Harry holds a proxy.
A drunk woman is not some "To whom it may concern" kind of letter. Women beings are the children of the universe, they have the right to be here; and whether or not it is clear to the rapists - no doubt their womanhood is unfolding as it should.
When I saw Rhodes students protesting bare-breasted against sexual violence on campus, then I knew fury had surpassed all conventional reasoning capacity. Reasoning with university management was no longer an option. It signalled the boiling degree of women's exasperation. Reality finally hit home that waving placards written "enough is enough" is no longer enough. A woman being's emphatic "NO" is not open for further deliberations.
Rhodes university's response to women's cry has been lackadaisical and gave room for sexual perverts to continue with their salacious fantasies. Rhodes bare-breasted protest was silent yet, so loud. So loud that it brought tuition to a standstill and attracted police to come and arrest the victims of rape.
As a man and a womanist, believe me when I say, these men who rape women so viciously aren't men in a true sense of the word. They are barbarians, predators and sexual perverts who can't sexually satisfy a woman for a long haul; hence their hit-and-run tactics.
The protest had to be graphic to attract political attention and give a depiction of what women go through in the dark corners of the campus. It was necessary to assert women beings monopoly over their bodies. Rhodes bare-breast protest is indicative of the need for 180 degree turn of status quo in favour of women. Wathinda abafazi, wathind' imbokodo. Uzakufa rapist ndini...
