I defied my own rule of going to bed after the ten o'clock news tonight. The headlines were disturbing in a way that I cannot get over, unless I write or say something about it. The first headline is about a poor, Black, unemployed young woman who locked her children in her home in an informal settlement so she can go look for a job. The news hook to the story was that she 'chained' and locked them in the house, but the house is referred to as a shack for drama. The children are said to be in a place of safety somewhere in the Gauteng Province. The patriarchal society we live in does not leave space for us to question if the police will help this woman. I saw people's reaction scolding the mother. Questioning why she had kids if she can't take care of them.
In the same story, there are two sound bites from people from the same area. One of them says the area is not safe and defends the mother for preventing her children from leaving the house while she is out looking for work. The mother of these children is described as non-violent person. The other clip defends her actions too. The woman in the clip tells the journalist how that area isn't great for children to grow up in. The last clip is of the police in a very dismissive tone. Rejecting reasons given for "neglecting" her babies. It makes me curious what will happen to this woman who is also not a South African citizen. It's said she is from Zimbabwe. Probably not documented because she stays in a squatter camp. No proper address, so her experience with the law will be painful one. Don't forget we are a xenophobic country. The story left me angry and anxious.
There was a second story of another woman, also Black, not poor but unemployed too. She is also well known because she used to be the police commissioner. The first woman to hold that post in post-apartheid South Africa. I doubt apartheid South Africa considered a woman to do this. But today Riyah Phiyega is fighting the boy's club that put her in the powerful she occupied. The media has not been kind to her. She presided over a period that saw miners were massacred by police. She tried to spin her way out of it and fell. I don't have English words to express the discomfort I have with how she's treat d from different quarters. This includes the media and her principals. In my opinion, that treatment has something to do with her being a woman. I will push it and say a Black woman. Even with her social power, she will sometimes find herself in the same boat with the arrested Zimbabwean woman who locked her kids up and went to look for a job. Because of the common denominator.
