Showing strength
You don’t have to appear strong to truly be strong, strong is waking up. Strong is existing in a world that constantly questions your truth. By existing you are strong. This lockdown has made me realise what strong truly is. After organising nationwide protests against Gender-based violence around South Africa, and seeing people come to life made me realise what strength and power truly is. When we speak out we are powerful, when we don’t speak out we are still powerful, by just existing we are powerful. Seeing the women and non binary people around me express their frustrations, sadness and anger publicly created everything to hit hard, that we have lost too many women, children and members of the LGBTQIAP+ community in South Africa. Every 3 hours a women is killed, every 26 seconds a women is raped. These statistics are frightening, it is frightening for me to know these statistics and we have to get angry about them! We have to fight for our lives, by creating a platform called “What makes us strong” I want to uplift and empower younger women and non-binary people to also feel worthy and truly create change. We hosted the protest in Cape Town, to bring us together so we wouldn’t feel alone and to make sure that our screams and cries are heard. Enough is enough and we really all need to make a conscious effort to be better. In this photographic series I am representing a few people in my life, I will be documenting them as naturally as possible and in a way that empowers, represents and truly shows who they are. I want to showcase their voices and make sure that they know that they are strong! I want them to know that they matter, to know that they are heard and to know that they can make a difference in our society. It is about building everyone up so that we can all rise up together in our power. We will be the change we wish to see in the world because no one else is going to change the world for us. We need to ensure that our voices are being heard and that we are not caught up in our echo chambers.
