A Moment of Silence with St Mary's School, Waverley
Nine crosses stand in David Quad, a memorial to nine women whose bodies were discovered in Ekurhuleni in two months. The installation, ENOUGH, was placed anonymously.
At 09h30, the whole school stopped what it was doing and gathered in the nearest quad. For some, that meant setting aside a lesson, a test or an assessment. The interruption was intentional: students, staff and the wider community were asked to stop, think and reflect on this very real crisis in our country and its direct impact on the lives of women and girls in our communities.
The leadership team from our sister school, St Mary's School, Waverley, joined the young men of the College in David and Pelican Quads to remember the nine women, and to speak up together for the dignity and safety of every woman and girl.
The young women from St Mary's read Every Three Hours by Koleka Putuma, followed by a moment's silence, after which the Revd Fr Thapelo Masemola led us in prayer:
God of life,
We commend to your mercy all women whose lives have been taken by violence, and all who mourn them.
Defend and strengthen every woman and girl who lives in fear, and be near to all who suffer gender-based violence.
Forgive us where we have been silent, indifferent, or have failed to protect the vulnerable.
Teach us to honour the dignity of every person, created in your image and likeness.
Make our homes, our school and our communities places of safety, respect and participation.
Give us courage to challenge violence, contempt and every abuse of power.
Form us in strength ordered towards service, responsibility and love.
And make us faithful to that vocation, that we may be instruments of your peace and justice.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Bridge Nursery School, Pre-Prep and Prep observed the silence in an age-appropriate way from their own quads.
Nine women. Nine lives. Nine absences.
ENOUGH.
On Friday, 18 September, the College walked into David Quad to find nine crosses planted on the grass, a memorial to the nine women whose bodies were discovered in Ekurhuleni.
ENOUGH
Nine women. Nine bodies discovered in two months. Nine lives reduced to headlines, forensic reports and questions that may never be answered.
These nine crude crosses are a memorial to them.
They have deliberately been made from cheap, rough, unplaned pallet wood. They are battered, scarred and imperfect. They have been beaten with hammers and chains. Their roughness is intentional: they represent bodies violated, lives brutalised, and women whose lives appear to have been assigned far less value by our society than they ever deserved.
The crosses are painted purple. The colour of the struggle against gender-based violence, but also a colour of mourning, dignity and royalty. There is something deliberately contradictory in that: women are sacred, yet too often treated as though their lives are cheap.
The red is violence staining that dignity.
Each cross has been driven through a newspaper carrying the headline of one of the nine murders. The crosses are not arranged neatly. There is no perfect line, symmetrical pattern or ordered display. Instead, they form a disturbed line. Some stand upright; others are slightly tilted. They are at different heights and different distances from one another.
This, too, is deliberate.
There is no neat order to violence. No pattern that makes it easier to understand. No orderly progression that allows us to make sense of it or distance ourselves from it. Violence is chaotic. Its victims are individuals, not statistics.
The crosses have been placed here without explanation, as bodies are sometimes discovered: unexpectedly, anonymously, terribly. For a moment, they bring that reality into our own protected space.
This is a school in which young citizens are being prepared to take their places in the world. It is therefore not enough for us to know that gender-based violence exists somewhere beyond our gates.
We must see it. We must confront it. We must count it.
And we must remember that behind every headline was a woman, a life, a family, a future.
Nine women. Nine lives. Nine absences.
And nine reasons to stop looking away.
ENOUGH."
