THE FEMICIDE DEBATE - WE SHOULD THINK BEYOND OUR NOSES

By Jaymo Wa Thika 

Every time we approach any societal problem on a gender perspective or through emotions, we lose the fight even before we enter the battlefield.

Killings are everywhere. Both men and women die every day and we cannot choose which death is more valuable than the other. Every day, we read about men killing women. We also read about women killing men especially in relationships. Every life matters regardless of gender.

When a man kills a woman, there is a national outcry and women start playing the victim card and try to show the world how men are killing women or will finish women..... But when a woman kills a man or uses gangs to eliminate a man, we start to fault find and look for reasons to justify this killing. Kwa nini alienda hapo? Yeye ndiye mwenye makosa and so on and so forth. 

That's playing with people's emotions. It is the same card leaders and politicians are playing to seek popularity and favour from gullible women folks. Not a genuine concern at all, even from the women leaders who don't wage the same vigour to agitate for the things that matter most for the common woman. For them, it's about the votes by pretending to show concern.

Every life is sacred and no one has the right to kill or hurt another. That dead person is someone's mother, aunt, sister, grandmother or granddaughter. The deceased is someone's father, brother, uncle, grandfather or grandson. This is not just some statistics.... a family somewhere has lost a loved one or even the breadwinner in their family.

What we are faced with today is a societal problem and we need to retrace our steps to see where the rain started beating us. Treating the symptoms will never solve a problem. We need to get to the root causes and start mending the broken ties, otherwise hii yote ni upuuzi tu which will take us nowhere.

Turudi nyuma ya hema na tujiulize kama jamii, tulipotezea mwelekeo wapi... Na tusisahau, when we started glorifying and worshipping money and wealth, we started losing the value of humanity. In all these murders, there is an aspect of money, either the lack of it or the misuse of money to manipulate others or to get what one wants.