THE COUNTRY THAT RAPES GIRLS AND CALLS IT CULTURE

A South African horror story in real time.

Jun 24, 2025

What Does It Say About Us That We Are Desensitized to Violent Crime?

I opened my phone and saw the headline: “Another girl. Eleven. Brutalized. Left for dead.” I didn’t gasp. I didn’t blink. I didn’t even pause my thumb. I kept scrolling.

My feed switched immediately to something lighter—a TikTok skit about Capitec bank queues, then a white woman dancing to amapiano. I laughed at both. The algorithm serves me joy, distraction, absurdity. It never serves me shock.

Somewhere in the background, a mother was scrubbing blood from her daughter’s school uniform. That image should have stopped me cold, but it barely registered.

I realized in that moment that violent crime has become background noise. We treat it as an ecological fact—like load-shedding or potholes—because we see it so often we assume there’s nothing we can do.

I remember an episode of South Park where school shootings happen weekly and parents stop reacting. Kids duck bullets between algebra and music class while adults chat about crockpots. Only one parent breaks down. Only she remembers that this isn’t normal.

Living in South Africa right now feels exactly like that. Another child is raped. We share a link on WhatsApp, maybe like the post on Facebook, and then we move on. Another woman is killed by her partner. We tweet. We scroll. We carry on. There are no protests, no street marches, no collective outrage.

Our justice system compounds the problem. Rape isn’t taken off the books—it’s regulated with protocols, numbers, case files. Victims endure invasive questioning. Perpetrators go home for dinner. Conviction rates remain depressingly low. Survivors are not protected. They are processed.

We’ve outsourced our rage to memes and dance challenges and late-night comedians. We click “like” without feeling anything real. We have become experts in distraction. Whoever wants to silence us doesn’t need censorship. They just need to keep our attention on the next funny video.

I refuse to normalize this. I refuse to carry on as if a child’s brutalized body is just another post in my feed. I refuse to accept that society has decided it’s easier to scroll than to act.

Desensitization is surrender. If we stop feeling horror, we stop demanding change. We stop insisting on justice. We stop valuing human life.

I won’t scroll past the next headline. I won’t let another girl’s story become yesterday’s news. I will feel the shock. I will feel the anger. I will demand something better—because the moment we give up our outrage, is the moment they win.

Sonia A. is a South African writer of Xhosa heritage whose work explores trauma, womanhood, silence, and survival. She holds a degree in Political Science and History and writes with a deep commitment to feminism, justice, and breaking generational cycles. Living in one of the rape capitals of the world, Sonia feels a responsibility — not just as a writer, but as a mother to a curious five-year-old daughter and an aunt to a strong-willed seven-year-old niece—to speak honestly about the realities many would rather ignore. Like so many women, she is also a survivor of male violence. Her writing is both personal and political: a space for truth-telling, healing, and refusing to stay silent.