Ongeziwe Taleni staged a lone gender-based violence protest in East London on Thursday – a move to highlight the scourge of abuse against women and children that President Cyril Ramaphosa called a crisis.
For five hours the young woman, in Grade 11 at Academy High School, stood at the traffic circle in Pearce Street, Berea, carrying a placard that said “rape is murder”.
She had other placards with names of gender violence victims: “Remember Reeva [Steenkamp], Sindi [Manqele], Khwezi [Fezekile Kuzwayo], Khensani [Maseko].”
And while Ramaphosa told the nation from a state Women’s Day event in Paarl that South Africa had failed its women, about 1000km away, the lone 17-year-old’s message was equally powerful...