No end to violent attacks

This has been a particularly disturbing news month as report after report reaches our desks involving horrific incidences of rape, family murders, domestic violence and assaults.

Once again, the victims have largely been vulnerable children, the elderly and women.

The factual, measured wording on our pages cannot possibly convey the emotional awfulness of these atrocities.

The very thought of bludgeoning a person to death with a brick, or stabbing, burning or shooting someone – perhaps a family member – is repulsive to any decent human being.

Even worse is the image of a person overpowering defenceless victims and subjecting them to vile physical or sexual attacks against their will.

As a nation we are ashamed and outraged at what’s happening among us.

This begs the question: given all the programmes dedicated to stopping or at least reducing the levels of violence, has any headway been made?

It seems not.

While sexual assault statistics keep climbing, government along with community-based organisations and other stakeholders relentlessly continue with talks, workshops, school visits and youth counselling courses in an attempt to in some way protect the vulnerable of society from these onslaughts.

But still the numbers keep mounting and the aggression levels show no sign of diminishing.

It is shocking, disheartening and despicable to learn that in South Africa a girl is more likely to be raped than to get an education and that every 17 seconds a woman suffers the terror of rape.

Perhaps we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. What about all those incidents that don’t find their way into the public domain via newspapers and the law courts?

The one positive among these heart-wrenching stories is that most of them came to us via the courts, indicating good police work in arresting the culprits as well as tough punishment imposed by magistrates.

Whether the latter will serve as actual deterrents does not seem to be the case, historically.

It is very difficult for police to prevent such crimes, which normally take place behind closed doors.

However, it would appear that more and more people have been encouraged to come forward and report such abuses, and that the SAPS has provided a far more friendly reporting environment for the abused.

We as communities need to get tougher in our condemnation of violence and being a part of the solution.

Celebrations such as Women’s Day and Women’s Month need to focus less on sentimentalising and politicising the occasion, and more on demanding justice for victims and the capacitating of those who fight these heinous crimes.

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