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www.cosatu.org.za • AUG/SEPT 2014

him to say. She was his only child and I can’t imagine what he’s going through. It’s dif fi cult to explain why, even as a stranger, I was also deeply affected by what happened to this girl. In the weeks after the funeral I poured over the grisly details (some of which I’ve omitted) as I tried writing about what happened to her, but it was too painful. It’s always hard to make sense of children dying, harder still when they are murdered. I fear that maybe we’ve become desensitised to violence, simply through the sheer magnitude of stories we encounter. Nearly every day there is a ghastly story reported in the news: a woman shot multiple times by her partner, a teenage girl raped and disemboweled, a young man murdered because he is homosexual. Until I was drawn by circumstance into the death of nine-year-old Queen, I had

neighbourhood as her attacker. When the police took him into custody the following day, he had fresh burn wounds and visible scratch marks on his body. She had fought him with everything she had. From the start, her chances of survival looked grim, and in the end she didn’t make it. She died on the 18th of March. The funeral was on a warm summer morning. A white hearse with tinted windows stood on the gravel road leading into the funeral marquee. The girl’s father was so shattered with grief he couldn’t speak, and her distraught classmates sang a funeral hymn full of sadness. When I spoke to the girl’s father, some weeks later, he looked every bit as crestfallen as he did when I’d last seen him at the funeral – a broken man in a smart suit and black suede shoes. I asked him how he’s doing. “I’m fi ne,” he said, “I’m fi ne.” In retrospect, it wasn’t the smartest of questions. I don’t know what I had expected

always read these stories with a mixture of temporary outrage and disinterest. In the long run though, I was always sure to forget. But forgetting is a dif fi cult thing to do when you encounter the families of the bereaved. I’ve come away from this emotionally wrenching experience a slightly different man. I’m no longer as disconnected about the levels of sexual violence in our society as I used to be, thinking it wasn’t my problem. But if we’re going to turn South Africa into a country were nine-year-old girls can safely fi nd their way back home, maybe we should start by recognising that it is everyone’s problem.

By Bongani Kona Edited by Czerina Patel

Bongani Kona is a freelance writer who works with Sonke Gender Justice

More at www.genderjustice.org.za

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