Come down and fight the hyenas

WHEN I was a child, my parents used stories about attacks by hyenas to scare us against coming home after dark.

Hyenas assumed such scary roles in our minds because they were portrayed as “evil” animals that enjoyed biting off big chunks of “steak” from people’s behinds.

This was enough to deter us from coming home after dusk.

Surprisingly, such stories have come back to haunt my adult world, only this time the threats are real.

The recent spate of rape and murder in South Africa has proved that we now have a new hyena in town, one that is more troublesome than the one from the folk tales. This one has gone through a process of evolution. It has learnt to walk upright, shamelessly pretending to be a human being.

While some of the species has pot bellies, others are leaner, but this does not make either variant less dangerous than the other. These two-legged creatures have developed an unquenchable appetite for blood and alcohol, spend most of their time in taverns drinking themselves out of balance, while waiting to pounce on females to steal their innocence and blood.

Others even go to church, but are also not be trusted as they are equally stealthy and dangerous. It seems there is no other way to view men who have turned rape and murder into a hobby.

We have heard many chilling stories of such incidents recently, stories that make our country one of the most dangerous in the world when it comes to the safety of women and girls.

We now seem to have men who are not scavengers but lethal predators preying on innocent women and girls.

Just like the rhino, our female species is in danger, being hunted down for their innocence.

It is no longer safe for any female to walk alone, from golden grannies to middle-aged women, all the way to baby girls.

Indeed, rape and murder is no longer news from afar but an overwhelming problem crying out for urgent action.

Just to bring this closer, the small town of Molteno recently had its own sad experience of rape and murder when a young woman lost her life in alleged rape and murder madness.

The question now is – how many more people must be raped and murdered before preventive measures are put in place?

Clearly our leaders are not doing enough when it comes to this national disaster.

Many vulnerable children still walk along bushy roads to school every day, exposing themselves to these shameless predators, while the responsible authorities are only seen on the television in campaigns that merely give lip service to dealing with this problem.

It is cheap and easy to use good English to comment on how brutal a certain rape or murder is and then to disappear, only to re-appear when a similar incident is repeated.

Leaders should not stay up and away in high places like monkeys afraid of dogs underneath a tree; rather they should come down and help the communities to fight these predators in every way possible, including through educational campaigns to prevent this ever-growing problem.

Zwelani Ncube is from Molteno