Etsê, some people really got the nerve to try and stretch their powers even where they are not supposed to, or maybe they just don’t know how far they may.

A few days ago I attended a function in the city, which among others, highlighted women’s rights, especially about their reproductive health.

During the tea break, while standing in the queue for some coffee, someone tapped on my shoulders. I turned around to face this policeman pointing at the floor indicating that I must pick up a spoon that was lying there.

I could feel the anger building up in me as I looked at him. As big as he was, I sized him up and felt like giving this dude a snot klap, because that is what he deserved. But since this was not the Tura and the man was in uniform, I decided to politely decline his request.

Actually I was so bedonderd (angry) that I asked him why he did not pick up the spoon himself. He was kind of embarrassed and just walked away.

Yes, what made him think he could order me around? Some people seriously do not have manners. I would have understood if he had ordered me to stop my car on the road or I was at the scene of an incident and he wanted some information about what happened. I am a private citizen who knows her rights and not one of his subjects or subordinates that he can push around.

This column is not a ‘man-bashing sanctuary’ but certain continuous ill behaviour by some of our men folk need to be condemned in every respect.

It is such mentality that continues to erode our society and give some males the feeling that they own us or that women are inferior to them and must “obey” them.

If that is what he does in his private life, let him be, but that type of behaviour does not play on my TV. I even hear in this day and age men asking, “What happened to all the good women of yester-year who were like our mothers?

“The ones who always had a warm cooked meal ready and asked no unnecessary questions where I was or what I was doing.”

Yes, those were the wonderful days when poor wifey had to scrape for food somewhere to put a warm plate on the table, while hubby who had squandered all his money on the kamborotos at some shebeen would come home and still expect to be served a “decent”, warm meal.

Those days were wonderful when hubby would sommer impregnate all the neighbouring women and then bring the kids home for wifey to feed and clothe. She was the one who never said a word when hubby just vanished the whole weekend somewhere to just reappear on a Sunday drunk as a skunk.

But since you want us to go back in time, let’s see. We can also bring back Missies and Ou Baas back to their glory days as in the apartheid days, when they used to moer us with a sjambok to do our work properly.

Those days a Monday papalaz was unheard of.  And what doctor would give you a sick note when he saw that you are just gesuip (drunk)? Do you think you would have been sitting at your big desk in some government office playing cards and chatting on Facebook dreaming of five o’clock tjaila time so that you could continue where you left off last night?
Please do not say I am mixing things that have kamma nothing to do with each other, because oppression is oppression no matter who is at the receiving end.

Today, we must be grateful to the fathers and mothers of this great Constitution, who have made it possible that we, the women, can today enjoy the same rights as our male counterparts, although in many spheres tradition is still being used as an excuse to cover up male dominance.

So, times have changed and perhaps it is time that some of us change too. Those memes you are daydreaming about will never reappear. Sorry Ngo!