Today is the 11th of January 2016. The 16 days of activism against gender based violence has come and gone. We've made (and mostly given up on) our New Year's resolutions... and it's exactly 2 weeks before my 42nd birthday. This year I want to feel like I have made some significant difference to life, the universe and everything. Please help me to do that by supporting a campaign that resonated with me from the moment I read the first drafts of the publicity material. All you have to do is take a picture of yourself banging a pot and post it on social media with the hashtags: #bangyourpot and #Kamysbirthdaywish. If you want to, you can also text the word "Tears" to 40111 to donate R20 to Transform Education about Rape and Sexual abuse and post the screenshot of that as well. The Bang your pot campaign is based on the true South African spirit of Ubuntu (community living). The traditional call for help in the townships from the 60s to the 90s was to beat a pot with a stick to draw the attention of neighbours who would then arrive bearing their own pots and sticks, until they gathered a crowd of concerned citizens. The perpetrator would be intimated by the strong show of support and leave without causing any harm. It also worked quite effectively to warn activists of police presence at a time when the ANC was banned. It is now a metaphor for a bygone age. It speaks of a world where people cared. It speaks of a world where injustice was not tolerated. It speaks of a world full of people who were willing to make sacrifices to achieve change. It speaks of the true sense of community that we have lost in our global village. It is time to recreate that world. We need to start caring again. We need to become as outraged by rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence as we once were about apartheid. Our children are more likely to be raped than to get a tertiary education. That should be enough to motivate us to act. Let the banging of our pots symbolise our commitment to change, our pledge to act against the scourge of violence that is destroying our world. Bystander intervention can save lives. The next time you hear the neighbours shouting go over and ask to borrow a cup of sugar. If you see somebody in difficulty, call the police or blow a whistle, or bang your pot. Let's make this bigger than the ice bucket challenge.
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