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Who Are We to Point Fingers |
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South Africans have risen up in outrage and disgust at the treatment being meted out to Caster Semenya and with good reason. Who do the IAAF and media think that they are to subject Semenya to the kind of humiliation, discrimination and abuse that she has had to endure the last few days? Nobody, but nobody should have to experience what she has experienced at the hands of these people.
The truth of the matter is that we as South Africans are very quick to point fingers at the international community when we feel that our pride, dignity and honor are being trodden on. The sad side of this situation is that this kind of abuse, injustice and discrimination plays itself out in our townships and cities every day. Women and men who do not meet up to the standards of what we expect them to look like get mistreated, ridiculed, beaten up, raped and murdered just for being different. Who can forget the case of a woman in Umlazi township, near Durban, who was stripped naked and her shack burnt down for wearing trousers. In a completely contradictory act a woman was sexually assaulted for wearing a miniskirt at a Johannesburg taxi rank.
Women who do not conform to the expectations of the predominantly heterosexual society and are lesbian or transgender experience all kinds of abuse and discrimination at the hands of the same people who are disgusted at the treatment of Semenya.
What Semenya has been through and may still have to endure is unacceptable. No one should be subjected to that kind of treatment.
The question we need to ask ourselves is “who are we to point fingers at the rest of the world”. Who are we to throw stones at the accused or find splinters in the eyes of others before we have first examined our own guilt or removed the log from our own eye?
We as Proudly South African citizens should first of all eliminate all forms of discrimination against each other based on race, gender, religion,  sexual orientation, Gender identity, gender expression or dress. We should not condemn any other group of people for doing anything which we are guilty of doing ten times worse to our own people.
By Caroline Bowley
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