We are no longer a healthy society. We are a crime scene. There is no joke today. No clever phrasing. No satire to hide behind. No laughter to dull the pain.
As a columnist, I usually search for the punchline in the chaos of our national life. Today, the punchline is a shard of glass lodged in the chest of every parent in Eswatini. It is the brutal truth that our children are being hunted – and that we, the adults, the community, the State, are failing them through a silence that has become criminal. I have been reading police reports from the past month and they read less like news and more like evidence logs from a crime scene. In four days, six children raped. In seven days, 12. So, let us be honest with ourselves: These are only the cases that survived fear, shame, intimidation and family pressure long enough to be reported. The real number lives in the dark. These are not statistics. These are babies. These are children whose greatest fears should be scraped knees and school tests, not the weight of a grown body or the breath of a predator in the dark. We live in a country where a four-year-old child in Mankayane was raped twice by a neighbour. Four years old. At that age, a child is still learning colours, still clutching a teddy bear, still falling while learning how to run. Yet that child was introduced to a violence so profound it has no language.
In Siphofaneni, a five-year-old was violated inside an unfinished building on New Year’s Day. While the nation sang hymns and welcomed a new beginning, a child was exposed to trauma and disease before she could even pronounce the word sex.
Six-year-olds were raped in Ezulwini and Vuvulane, inside houses. Eight-year-olds. 10-year-olds. Attacked more than once.As a parent, I ask questions that have no easy answers.
How do you explain pain to a child who does not understand what was done to them?
How do you look into their eyes, once filled with wonder and see them emptied by betrayal?
How do you tell a 10-year-old girl at Mvutjini, raped twice without protection, that her life has been permanently altered by someone she trusted?
We tell our children to come home before the streetlights switch on. We tell them home is safe. The reports expose that lie. Homes have become hunting grounds. Children are being raped by stepfathers who should be shields, by cousins, neighbours and, horrifyingly, by teachers. In Pigg’s Peak, a teacher was arrested for allegedly raping a 16-year-old learner multiple times.
When classrooms become crime scenes, where does a child go to learn? At Mhobodleni, a stepfather allegedly raped a 12-year-old for over a year. For a year. Where does such a child sleep? Where does safety exist?The cruelty of these crimes is matched only by the weakness of our response. At Buka, a teenage boy allegedly raped four children, including a six-year-old and attempted to rape another. He is still at large. He walks freely among us, while those children live in permanent fear.This is not just a policing failure. It is a constitutional failure.The Constitution of the Kingdom of Eswatini is clear: Children must be protected. This is not a suggestion. It is a command. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and every liSwati – parent, leader, official, neighbour is bound to uphold it.
When children are violated repeatedly and predators roam freely, the Constitution is being broken daily.Perhaps the coldest line in these reports appears again and again: Without protection.
A five-year-old cannot spell HIV. They do not understand viruses, ARVs or lifelong medication. Yet, they are exposed to life-altering disease before they can read.We are sentencing children to hospitals, stigma and psychological scars before they have begun to live. This is not just sexual violence. It is the slow destruction of a future.In Siteki, a 14-year-old girl tried to end her life after rape. That is the true consequence of this crime. Rape is not only an act of violence; it is the deliberate killing of hope.
So, I ask plainly and without emotion: Where is justice?
Why are suspects not arrested? Why are sentences not severe enough to terrify would-be offenders?
To the Judiciary, I appeal with urgency: Leniency in cases of sexual violence against minors is cruelty. Sentences must be harsh, final and unmistakable. The law must fall like a hammer on anyone who touches a child.
To communities: Stop protecting family names while burying children in silence.
To parents: Silence is not dignity; it is complicity. To leaders: Outrage without action is theatre.
When 10 rape cases are reported in a single week, we are no longer a healthy society. We are a crime scene pretending to function.
The punchline is this: We have laws, we have a Constitution and we have a duty. What we seem to lack is the courage to act. If you know something, speak. If you see something, act.
If you are a parent, hold your child today and swear that you will not be silent.
Right now, silence is the shelter that allows monsters to breathe.There is no innocence left to gamble with.
Also, history will judge us harshly.
There is no humour left to deploy. No satire to hide behind.
No punchline to soften what must be said.
Today, the truth stands naked and cold: Our children are being raped and the adults of this country are failing them.
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