Themes of femicide and empowerment

DON MAKATILE

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SHE did not die, even when there were indications, and fears, that he was going to do her in. Instead, she killed him.

The opening of Kopano Matlwa's latest book, Bosadi, is the sort drummed into the student's head in Feature Writing classes at Journalism school. It is so good it makes its way into literature.

You'd want to know why she killed him.

A doctor by training, her work satisfies another rule of journalism: it is timely.

This could easily be incidental but with marketing people, you'd never know. The launch may just have been part of a marketing drive to coincide with the lie-down march that took place last Thursday, when the world's eyes were on South Africa.

The nationwide protest - with not so much as a wee stone thrown, is the most powerful statement ever made against the violence visited on women and children.

The President declared femicide and intimate partner violence a national disaster and the visiting world dignitaries left Nasrec in Johannesburg with a sense of the plight of women in this country.

I was never going to stop reading a book with this opening: 'I killed him.'