‘I am more scared of them.’

This is what Adande Tyokolwana says in a video hashtagged #IAriseAndSpeakOut, made by the MultiChoice Group for the Uyinene Mrwetyana Foundation in 2020.

In August 2019, Uyinene’s life was cut short by a post office worker, Luyanda Botha, at the Clareinch post office in Cape Town. The 19-year-old University of Cape Town student had gone to fetch a parcel at the post office.

In a country that daily experiences gruesome attacks on women by men, Uyi’s murder captured the headlines in a way only a few incidents of violence had done before.

A university student at a top university who goes to a post office to fetch a parcel and ends up dead in the post office will generate fear in many women at universities, in women anywhere. I can die a violent death at the post office, on an ordinary day; I can die going about my routine daily business. That’s what a person may feel. While it remains a hypothesis why the killing of Uyi galvanised the righteous rage of thousands of women and tipped over into public protests against men’s violence against women, Adande Tyokolwana’s words touch on the daily emotion that not only she lives with, but many other women too. Fear.

I am more scared of them.

‘Them’ are men, of course.

Men have become phobogenic objects.

Women are scared of men. And women’s fear of being violated by men means they cannot love freely. It is the well-composed man women think they know, behind the counter, at work, as much as the stranger at a deserted train station, in a parking lot, who poses a risk to them.

A society in which women are scared of men is not just a terrifying and maddening place for women. It also throws up questions about whether we can love when we are afraid of being close to those among whom love may be found. About the reduced likelihood of friendship between genders. The absence of playfulness. Love under threat.

How does an individual find or nurture love in a society where fear is pervasive? Can a scared person genuinely and willingly care for another? It does not sound possible, for fear does not care.