There are some moments when being a publication that celebrates African people, creativity, culture and excellence feels complicated. This is one of those moments.
As I sit down to write this Editor’s Note, my heart is heavy.
The first time I was confronted with cruel death was in 2021, when a friend was killed and his body was dumped right in front of his own home, at his gate. I remember the shock of it—the realisation that someone I knew, someone who had a life, a family, friends and people who loved him, could suddenly become a story of violence.
Perhaps that is why what is happening to women across South Africa feels deeply personal. Because it can be anyone’s mother, sister, wife, aunt, friend or colleague.
I keep thinking about how often we celebrate the brilliance of African women. We celebrate their beauty, their businesses, their creativity, their resilience and their intelligence. We celebrate the spaces they occupy and the barriers they continue to break.
But what happens when the most basic thing they deserve—the right to be alive—is still not guaranteed?
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time when we are reminded of another battle many women face. Yet, alongside that conversation, we are confronted with an even more painful reality: women are still losing their lives to violence in a country where we have spoken for generations about Ubuntu—I am because we are.
For years, I have watched the hashtags. I have watched movements grow. I have watched people demand justice for their mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. For a moment, the country stands together.
And then, weeks or months later, we return to regular programming.
We move on.
But families don’t. Their mothers don’t. Their children don’t. Their friends don’t.
This October, perhaps the conversation needs to go beyond celebrating women for what they achieve, what they create, how they nurture and how much they endure.
Perhaps we need to ask for something much simpler.
Let women simply be. Let them live. Let them walk home. Let them exist without fear. Let them grow old. Let them dream. Let them become everything they were meant to become.
Because before a woman is a mother, a sister, a wife, a daughter, a colleague, a creative, a businesswoman or a leader, she is a human being.
And she deserves the right to simply be a woman—and to be alive.
