Kenyans love to condemn gender-based violence…but… as long as it’s happening on a screen.
When it happens outside our gate at 4 a.m…, suddenly everyone becomes a philosopher of “minding your business.”
We chant “protect women,” but we whisper “usiingilie” when it matters. And that hypocrisy is killing women long before the perpetrators do.
Stay with me now,
Recently, a friend of mine told me what happened outside his home at dawn, just one of those moments that exposes who we really are. He heard a commotion, looked outside, and saw a drunk man attacking two women. One managed to escape. The other stayed behind and took the blows. People watched. No one moved.
Until he did.
He left the safety of his house with nothing but a stick and tried to disrupt the beating.
What followed was enh, chaos, he was grabbed, insulted, beaten with the same stick he had put down to appear less threatening. His cousin’s hand was nearly fractured. He ended up with a swollen face, a broken phone and a police OB number.
The woman escaped because he stepped in. She left alive because someone drew the aggression away.
But the fact that she walked away alive does not mean she is safe. The man who attacked her is still roaming the same streets. Still drunk with the same entitlement.
Still convinced he can beat women without consequences because, frankly, he almost did.
And after that confrontation who knows where his anger will land next? Will he go looking for her?
So as much intervention may save a life in the moment, what are our systems doing to guarantee long-term safety for the women involved or even the men who intervene?But hey, this is a conversation for another day.
“Why didn’t you stay inside?”
“This isn’t your problem.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t stab you.” Oh the famous words of your so called fingers behind the #StopGBV Hashtags.
This country is drowning in cowardice dressed up as caution.
The bystander effect has become our national culture. We see violence unfolding and our first instinct is to record and not respond.
We have normalized watching a woman get slapped, punched, dragged and doing absolutely nothing.
If that man hadn’t stepped in that night, one woman would be nursing severe injuries today, or worse a dead body on the sidewalk of the street. But we would still be online tweeting #EndGBV like everything is fine.
Stopping GBV will never be safe, Intervening will never be convenient and Women my dear brother will not be saved by our hashtags.
Who do we want to be really, A nation that films violence? A nation that debates GBV on TV panels while loudly walking past it on the streets? A nation where a woman’s safety depends on luck or on whether one out of fifty bystanders feels brave enough?
That 4 a.m. intervention wasn’t perfect. It was messy, dangerous and painful. He walked away bruised. But to me that was a moral win.
Kenya must decide..whether we are observers of violence or opponents of it. Because right now, our inaction is indistinguishable from complicity.
And until ordinary men are willing to step off the sidelines either imperfectly or even fearfully, then GBV will continue to thrive in our silence and our hashtags.