Dear Men

Dear men,

Do you know that today is about you? November 19 is celebrated by some countries as International Men’s Day.

We’re supposed to celebrate your strength, health and wealth in all spheres on this day. When we wake up next to you on this day, we’re supposed to lovingly look at your faces and see Marcus Garvey, Muhammed Ali, Tupac, Lumumba, Emperor Haile Selassie…heck even Jesus Christ and all of his disciples and followers.

We’re supposed to see the doting fathers of our beautiful children and even imagine them in as our sons’ favorite character Spiderman and even Shaka Zulu…izinja zelife basically.

Dear men, for this important day I had this celebratory narrative all worked out in my head for weeks because men are actually at the top of my list of favorite delicious people.

In my head, in your honor, I’d slated all these Shakespearean lyrics that, even though they don’t resemble your faces, they sure feel like your well chiseled presence.

I had all the live broadcast commentary of your inaugurations as Presidents because despite the way Africa is set up in this regard, you still carry aspirations to be great leaders in your communities.

But the devil had me paging through local newspapers and stepping into downtown Johannesburg this week, reminding me why so many of you may not know about his glorious day. The work of Satan HIMself had me entertaining haters with their stinking conspiracies about why November 19 also happens to be World Toilet Day.

Not All Men

Dear men, I know that ‘not all men…’ but do you know that it tires us - your sisters and mothers - to read of your kind stabbing a teenage girl 10 times because in your world one syllable responses to your sexual advances are incomplete?

Tell me how it makes you feel that one of your kind, somewhere in downtown Jozi where I found myself working this week, the one tasked with the responsibility of nurturing and leading children and their parents, decides to prioritize his sexual greed by raping seven adolescents? A whole school principal? He’s still the principal today even though charges were laid against him because men and their capitalist wisdom.

I’m serious, tell me? I know ‘not all men…’ but how do we believe that when you act no differently to people who post caption-less pictures on Instagram?

‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ they say so without that caption or even a hashtag-nyana ke with its global-local appeal and reach? Emoji-nyana? From a caption-less picture we can and do read and conclude anything we want and the end result is mixed messages.

That’s what you’re currently giving us when it comes to the addressing the atrocities your kind directs at us; the women, girls and children.

Your silence seriously wouldn’t be an issue for me if it was consistent. Why is your silence as loud as the sound of the livestock at the cattle dip on Thursday mornings down there at kaLanga?

Why can’t you make as much noise as your kind do when they tell us how to be women; good women who are so-called marriage material.

Right now you are just like those whose voices we hear only when they scream “Not all white people…” when they are called out for their racist antics.

Dear Men

Dear men who are ‘not all men…’ we appreciate you so please prove us wrong. We truly would like to hear you celebrate not only us but your kind too.

We’d like you to trust us with your pain because we know how you have lovingly and responsibly raised children who it later turned out you had to let go because they did not carry your DNA.

Please share with us how you motivated yourselves to carry on living with a positive outlook even after you found out that she respected someone else more than you and even brought him into your marital home under the guise that she was a cousin. Please tell us how it makes you feel that you were molested as a child.

Rather than feel depressed and then take out these frustrations on women that don’t know your dark stories, can you lay bare your vulnerabilities in song, in poetry, in books and blogs and trust that we’ve always wanted to live in harmony with you?

Because I’ll tell you what, days like International Women’s didn’t just happen. Women had to stand up for themselves to earn days like today. They have stood from the 1920s when woman won their fight for the right to vote in the U.S., to 1956 when they demanded their rights to move freely on the streets of Apartheid South Africa, to Beijing in 1995 when they demanded to be recognized as equals in all spheres of life, and back to Swaziland where women married in community of property have demanded and won their right to own property. It should inspire you that these women were supported by men in their journeys.

Dear men, know that when we say DEAR men, we say this with the deepest meaning of the word. We miss you. We need you. We respect you. We want to love you like we love our wine. You were made for us by us. Come back home and have a happy international men’s day. Let’s start afresh.