By Vanessa Tedder
To IOL newspapers
I do not think it’s necessary for me to point out that our country and the many men of this country are at war with women and children.
You are the best placed people to know full well the statistics and that even those horrifically high numbers are not even a true measure of the magnitude of this bloody and gruesome war.
This you know! I know you know! The 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children Campaign coming up and I have no doubt that your publications will, like the rest of the country, jump on that bandwagon and highlight the stats. You will even find survivors and victims to interview. You will write of the carnage and the failures of us, as a nation and government, to conquer this disease that plagues our communities. You know as well as I do that for those 16 days your newsrooms won’t be running dry, you will have content. You will sell your papers. Because, after all, that’s your business right?! For those 16 days your diary is sorted.
But here is where I have a huge issue and take severe umbrage.
First, let’s get this out of the way. I was once a journalist and I guess even though I have left the industry, journalism is an intrinsic part of who I am. And I am a survivor too. Two critical crucifying components of my very being, which I guess brings me to this letter and post.
Sasha Lee! Gunned down in the prime of her life. Another statistic of this war. Just days before the country embarks on 16 days of activism. Sasha Lee will not be the only woman to lose her life to an abusive partner in the run-up to your 16 days spread. Of that we can all be sure. And long after the 16 days has ended the body bags will continue to pile up.
What I read in the coverage of Sasha Lee left me gutted and enraged. And judging from the public feedback, I can safely say it did with many others too.
The article I read painted a picture of a man “who tried to work things out”, a man who was so consumed with “love” he had no option but to plug Sasha Lee’s body with bullets and take his own pathetic life.
The message I received as a woman from this article was simple and brutal: shut up and stick it out, every relationship has problems, don’t leave or it could cost you your life, and women are nothing more than possessions to dispose of at the discretion of men.
The article has taken the fight for women’s rights, breaking the silence and the cycle, back at least two decades.
Had I read this article before I made the decision to get out and away from my abuser, I probably would have been too terrified to even contemplate doing so.
How many other women trapped in this hell are perhaps feeling the very same way? You have compromised them all.
And do you know what the most scariest part of all is? How many abusive men who read that article felt more emboldened ? You have empowered them all.
You sought to romanticise and glamorise a cold-blooded killer as a troubled and desperately in love man.
You fed right into the clichéd and, dare I say, sexist, if not dangerous, dialogue that women are responsible for the behaviour of such vile and dangerous men.
The morning the story was assigned, everyone would know that it would be the lead. It had all the drama and blood required to be headline news just like that, no hard digging or delving needed.
What a dream for any newsroom, editor or journalist!
But the story of Sasha Lee isn’t textbook journalism. There are no two sides. There is no neutrality.
The story of Sasha Lee, in the context of South Africa’ s track record, is a story that simply wasn’t “juicy” enough. Just another woman killed.
The story of Sasha Lee was though an assignment that shouted and begged for empathy and brutality in the telling/reporting of it.
“Who f***ing cares!” Those were the words spewed out to me several years ago when I pitched a story of a girl who was in hospital in a coma because her boyfriend had beaten her up badly. And this came from a female sub-editor in a morning diary meeting.
“Who f***ing cares!”
And that’s exactly the impression that sunk into my head and brain when I read your article.
Who f***ing cares! Just another woman murdered!
Perhaps if Sasha Lee’s killer got his “timing right” and executed his horrific act during the 16 days campaign we may have been given a different article!
I can picture the headline though. Hell, I could even imagine the opening lines to the story had it happened during the 16 days.
Journalism isn’t cemented in outdated textbooks. The times we live in demand and dictate newsrooms and journalists step up to their role and responsibilities, especially on issues of social evils that threaten the core of our humanity and our lives.
This article would have passed through several hands and eyes before it went to print and not one person in that chain noticed the glaring and grotesque omission of the real story. The story of Sasha Lee.
Failed by the system! Failed!
She did all the things we, as women, are told to do when in an abusive relationship. She went by the book.
And yet Sasha Lee still ended up dead.
Dead! Murdered! Killed! Gunned down! Not the watered-down version of a love-struck desperate man that you fed us.
I consider myself very much part of the media so I will use the collective “we” and will ergo serve this indictment on myself too.
It is morally and ethically reprehensible that we in the media in 2022 are sticking to this Dark Ages style of reporting portraying victims of abuse and femicide as the catalysts of this equally reprehensible behaviour.
Sasha Lee was the ONLY martyr here and not by her own choice.
Her murder was a chance to step up and give volume to the plight of women in this country.
One can’t even accuse anyone in this storytelling chain of being objective.
Sasha Lee’s story was the story and will be the story of hundreds of women.
Sasha Lee was failed. By the system and, finally, by each person who was tasked with telling the story of her fight to escape from a monster and her final moments when this monster snuffed out her life.
You can argue this monster has a family and loved ones who are also in turmoil. And yes, I can accept that with no rebuttal.
But this is South Africa, it’s 2022, women are being butchered, strung from trees, hacked and tossed into bins like garbage and shot dead in parking lots.
Hunting, dismembering and desecrating women is, without a doubt, the favourite pastime of thousands of men in this country.
Sasha Lee became the trophy prize of this national blood sport.
Even in their violent and gruesome deaths women are failed.
But who f***ing cares, right?
Vanessa Tedder is an award-winning former television journalist, and author of the best-selling memoir ‘Beaten, but not broken’, and the children’s book ‘The Selfish Shongololo’.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily the views of IOL or Independent Media.
** If you’d like to join the conversation, please email iolletters@inl.co.za and be sure to include your contact number and physical address (not for publication).
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally posted by Vanessa Tedder on her Facebook profile and has been republished with her permission.