DEAR MR. PRESIDENT
‘Dear Mr. President’ is an open letter to Cyril Ramaphosa; it is horrifying in its simplicity – an embroidered list of names, the names of every womxn and child that has lost their life to Gender-based Violence. Those womxn and children who were murdered so violently deserve to be remembered, not as a statistic or number, but as a name on a billboard or the front page of a newspaper, a never to be forgotten reminder that needs to become a part of our national collective.
Embroidering each name gives me time to pause and remember them. It’s a time-consuming labour of love that I do daily in honour of each life lost. I am stitching their memory onto fabric; a reminder that their names should be shared and done so with conviction. They are our mothers, our sisters, our aunts, our wives, our grandmothers, our daughters, our granddaughters, and our life partners. They are the backbone of our country. My hope is to have this letter handed to President Ramaphosa, I want him to roll open the white fabric like a sacred scroll and read the names out loud. I want him to be embarrassed by the names embroidered in red thread, a symbol of the blood that continues to drench our soil, stark against the white fabric of innocence lost. We are becoming an endangered species.
Nell-Louise
71
Dec 2022 | Collective Action Magazine
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