Who is a woman really?

I hear Brenda's got a baby.

But Brenda's barely got a brain.

A damn shame, the girl can hardly spell her name.

"That's not our problem, that's up to Brenda's family."

Well let me show you how it affects the whole community.

Lesane Parish Crooks

Now Brenda is a typical adolescent from a broken and dysfunctional family.

Her mother disappeared and left Brenda with her relatives while Brenda was still a toddler, her father was a cocaine addict and had disappeared even earlier than Brenda's mother did.

The deadbeat father eventually died from a cocaine overdose, so Brenda grew in the ghetto with an indifferent extended family of relatives.

Brenda got herself a boyfriend, her boyfriend was her cousin, now let's watch the joy end

She tried to hide her pregnancy, from her family who really didn't care to see, or give a damn if she

Went out and had a church of kids as long as when the check came they got first dibs

Now Brenda's belly's getting bigger but no one seems to notice any change in her figure

She's twelve years old and she's having a baby, in love with a molester, who's sexing her crazy

And yet and she thinks that he'll be with her forever and dreams of a world where the two of them are together, whatever

He left her and she had the baby solo, she had it on the bathroom floor and didn't know so

She didn't know, what to throw away and what to keep, she wrapped the baby up and threw him in a trash heap

Now picture yourself as:

A twelve year old with no parents or models, raised in an indifferent dysfunctional family set up, just delivered a baby fathered by your elder paedophilic cousin who molested you only to abandon you at delivery.

What would you do?

Brenda left the baby at a dump site and never went back because the family wouldn't help her or at the least would have chased her away.

Brenda couldn't provide for herself and neither could she get any job being that young and unskilled, her only option was to sell cocaine but she always got robbed of any cash she made from the sales.

Brenda had rent to pay, food and clothes to survive and she could afford neither.

She was indebted to the drug dealers who's cocaine she took, sold and got robbed off the cash, her drug abuse got her into cocaine addiction and the overwhelming desperation to feed her craving only grew stronger.

She saw prostitution as the only way to survive her hell, eventually the prostitute is found murdered.

Brenda is her name.

This is a true life story as narrated by Tupac Shakur in one of his radio-friendly singles titled Brenda's got a baby.

The song was part of the reason why Whites and other non hip-hop fans in the nineties started paying attention to hip-hop because of the portrayal of the nerve-wracking ghetto reality that many black folks were stuck in.

Brenda's story is one of parental neglect, loss of innocence, being taken advantage of by relatives, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, poverty and death.

Brenda's story is a story about Brenda but the moral of the story lies deeper in the untold story of how Brenda's story unwrapped itself the way it did.

The untold story raises more questions than it answers.

Why did the father leave?

Where was the mother?

Where was the entire family and community at large?

Where was the government?

Where was the church and social services?

Was there anything anyone could have done at any instance to redirect Brenda's fate?

Where was God?

I guess we will never know, unfortunately this is a recurring fate.

Women get molested, shamed then stigmatized.

Women get impregnanted then abandoned.

Women get sexually used, financially misused and physically abused.

Not all, but very many women have been on the receiving end of mysogynistic mistreatment from men.

Maybe it's because women are generally physically weaker, emotion-prone and more harshly judged by society.

Maybe it's because many women have not been taught self-love and acceptance or how to value themselves and as a result resort to seeking validation from men.

Maybe it's because many men were taught that women are to be submissive and some men took that as their masculine right to override and bend a woman's will whenever she tries to resist his unwarranted dominance.

Maybe it's this, maybe it's that, maybe it's something else, maybe it's the men, maybe it's the women, maybe it's both but certainly it's a lack of manliness on men's part and an inaccuracy in self value on women's part.

Masculinity is based on self sacrifice, femininity is based on self preservation.

Masculinity embodies risk and challenge, femininity embodies beauty and grace.

Manhood plants, womanhood nurtures.

Men grow through hardship and challenge, women grow through appreciation and praise.

An immature man, or rather a man without manliness cannot handle a woman in her full femininity.

Only men with questionnable manliness abuse women.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where not entirely but considerably, men don't know how to be men and neither do women know how to be women.

What do I mean though?

Being a woman comes with challenges I know nothing about, but as a man here's my perspective.

The value of a woman rises with her purity and chastity.

The value of a woman rises with her beauty and grace.

The value of a woman lies in her ability to nurture potential into life.

It's the words she says,

the mercy in her gaze,

the elegance in her steps,

the gentleness in her breath,

the faith in her dreams,

the kindness in her face,

the sweetness in her scent,

the clemency in her embrace.

In her full measure, Kings will bow down to the presence of her grace.

I know it's a toll order and unachievable in full measure but magic happens when men fully appreciate their women.

But we've deceived our women to the point they've become equally deceitful.

We've manipulated and objectified our women to the point they've become equally selfish and opportunistic.

We've terrified our women and we are now terrified of the terror they are capable of.

We've torn into their hearts, broken them and made them heartless.

We've torn into their body parts, fathered daughters in lodging flats, only for them to grow and sell us their body parts in the same lodging flats.

If we heal ourselves then we can heal our women,

If we heal our women then we can heal our children.

Values make a man, it's values that make a woman.

Being a woman should not be defined by having a husband and children, being a woman should not be defined by sexual attraction,

being a woman should not be defined by weakness and fragility.

Womanhood is defined by the ability to nurture.

For the will is sexless, then men and women are equal, but born for different roles.

Victor Mafusa