Spotted by Laura Rosen Cohen:
Even as the mourning for Mandela goes on, one child is raped every three minutes in South Africa and three children are murdered every day. If there is anything that the world ought to mourn, not only today, but every day, it is a horrifying reality in which a South African woman is more likely to be raped than to learn to read, a quarter of the men admit to having raped and men with AIDS believe that they can find a cure by raping a baby. Troubling facts like these defy the easy inspiration of the happy ending. They remind us that history does not stop the way that a film script does. There is no moment when the crowd cheers, the camera pans up and the audience is free to leave the theater and look no further because the story has ended.”
***
Which means I have to go over this again for the thick-headed:
Please don’t tell me that these awful men need more “education.”
Let’s pretend for a moment that you have a chronic, incurable disease AND that, bizarrely enough, raping a baby really would cure you.
So: Would you do it?
I’m hoping the answer is “no.”
It’s not about “education,” it’s about basic morality, and being able to control one’s own savage impulses — something too many Africans seem unable or unwilling to do.
