After meeting a potential suitor, 30-year-old South African Olorato Mongale never returned home. Her life was needlessly cut short on Africa Day.
A CCTV image shared on social media shows her leaving for the date in broad daylight. She had informed her friend and, as some noted, was “dressed decently.” These are safety precautions women are encouraged to take because of the state of society. But none of that mattered. The man she met had already made up his mind. As netizens observed, he parked far from surveillance cameras and reportedly used cloned number plates. The premeditation was clear.
Still in South Africa, just weeks earlier, 11-year-old Jayden-Lee Meek was also killed. In Namibia’s Okahandja town, an hour from Windhoek, three young girls—Ingrid Maasdorp (5), Rosvind Fabian (6), and Beyoncé Kharuxas (15)—were brutally assaulted and murdered in recent months.
These represent just a fraction of the murders that make breaking news, yet they are part of an ongoing, relentless pattern. The headlines may come and go, but the crisis remains. The perpetrators aren’t mythical monsters—they are human beings, fully aware of their choices to do harm.
Lately, I find myself asking: Can we overcome this in our lifetime? I ask this the same way I question whether we will ever overcome racial and tribal conflicts.
We live in an era of awareness. Information, campaigns, and education on gender-based violence and human rights are everywhere. This is no longer about ignorance. It’s about choice. About intent.
Contrary to the belief that media coverage encourages violence, I believe it does the opposite. The stories, the interviews with grieving families, the heartbreaking details of victims’ final moments—all of it is meant to shake us, to hold up a mirror to our society. Yet still, the cheapening of the lives of others continues.
I only echo a not-so-rocket-science truth: more than laws, more than protests or government efforts, all of us need to be on board—to choose, by our own prerogative, to be better human beings.
Until each of us confronts our own darkness, a safer society will remain elusive. The road ahead demands embracing personal responsibility to support collective efforts.