I have watched the clock move in emergency rooms from the high passes of Bhutan to dusty hospitals in Niger, Zimbabwe, and now, SA. But nowhere have the seconds felt as heavy as they do here in SA where a rape occurs every 26 seconds. Just as quickly as my pen moves or as my memory conjures the sight of a patient at dawn, another life is torn — another wound opened in the fabric of our nation. Yet the number you see — more than 10,700 rapes reported in just the first three months of 2025 — barely captures the scope of the disaster.
Only about 15% of rapes are ever reported to authorities, which means the “official” statistics are but a shadow of the truth. Behind every number is a story: a child afraid, a woman robbed of voice, families and futures scarred forever. My own journey through trauma medicine began far from SA — in the ice-clad hospitals of the Kingdom of Bhutan. There, I learnt resilience under the weight of mountains and in the isolation of high-altitude clinics.
Later, I served as a UN orthopaedic surgeon in Niamey, Niger, where violence was as persistent as the desert wind. Zimbabwe’s Mpilo Central Hospital in the Mzilikazi township was my next stop. The suffering was immense, but nothing compared to the horrors that awaited me in the “New SA”. I had not seen such violence — against women, against children, against hope itself.
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