The battle for justice for Cwecwe is now a racial war. We should be protecting the child, not debating privilege and division.
There is a new banner which is displayed in unity – #JusticeforCwecwe. While we wait for the DNA results, there is a combined effort from the public to seek justice for the seven-year-old girl.
The protests are a voice for the child and the hashtags are means to keep her plight relevant.
While AfriForum seeks to achieve whatever their goal is, they eagerly jumped on a case that questions its integrity.
And some quarters of society see this as more than a case that landed on their dance. It is seen to undermine the seriousness of a young black child’s case against a man of a different racial group.
Rape and molestation once again manifests into a conversation centred around race.
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Truth is, we are continuously told that “if you have nothing to hide, compliance should not be challenged”. Would a “Xolani” in Alexandra have been given time and space for them to submit to a buccal sample?
Would Nadine Hattingh’s violators still be lurking somewhere? Surely by now they would have been apprehended? I mean, that is what history constantly demonstrates to us.
There is a colour divide that has happily co-existed with Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation, but we would have hoped that justice would be blind to race.
While the demand for vengeance exists, the narrative that the case unfolds as it has, is because white privilege versus black disparity is at war – once again.
We may, with subtle disgust, make jokes that privilege exists. We may, when it is convenient for the echelons of our classiest society, ignore the obvious when we see it and it makes us lose our comfort.
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But we may also see it and react with rage and voice our anger when the disparity rings too close to home for a false sense of comfort.
We may react in our different ways. But we must remember, this problem will very seldom disappear without great effort. It’s the exploitation of the haves at the expense of the have nots.
Is Matatiele school principal Jaco Pieterse guilty? We do not know. Would he have been excluded earlier had he submitted his samples? Yes. Should he have been forced to prove his innocence, a right he invoked I suppose, but his integrity has come into question?
And now here we are, divided, instead of aiming to protect and heal an already violated child. We are a nation who is yet to start an honest journey to non-racialism.
