To everyone keen to provide a safe future for our children

As a parent, I don’t believe a death sentence or a life sentence in prison or any conceivable punishment on my child’s rapist will support my healing from this enormous loss. Hearing/reading comments about the murderer/rapist being a miscreant, a sub-human or a piece of dirt will also not offer peace or comfort to inconsolable, grief-stricken loved ones.

What we can do is listen to the story we tell ourselves about what a suitable punishment would be. Are we promoting law and order? Are we supporting a safe environment where children are safe to jog? That Howard Oliver has been found guilty implies the justice system is working for now. We are all equal as human beings. We show up differently in the world but the people who spew more hate through their words and thinking do no good for our wounded country.

Let him be held accountable and responsible with the consequences of his malicious and fatal actions. Maybe he will learn something, maybe he won’t that is his journey. He chose it! It is not usual or ordinary for a normal person to inflict this level of gruesomeness on another. Let’s focus on how we can prevent more Howards and how we can raise more Franziska Blöchligers.

Theirs is a tale of two cities. My wish is that Franziska’s life and death will bring us closer as people in her honour and in her memory. My wish is that Oliver’s ghastly actions will awaken in us how fractured our society is; how empathy, compassion, love and kindness are often replaced by hardness, brutality, indifference to life and death.

It is also important to realise that Oliver does not represent his whole neighbourhood. Since Franziska’s murder and after an invitation, I have started building relationships with families, groups and individuals in Westlake.

These families are also working hard to survive. The usual issues in their socio-economic conditions are as worrying to the people who live there as they are to most of us. They don’t have a choice but to live there, so building relationships and understanding what is really happening there is vital to get a grip on how children can be protected, criminals can be isolated, and victims and families can be supported. The solutions for the social problems are mostly already in the community in all communities!

There is so much value in ordinary people like us building bridges between surrounding areas. The story we tell ourselves and the reality are often surprising and very educational we have to be willing to understand and learn! All communities have leaders, elders, church, civic, sport and youth groups with whom to work and support. 

The majority of people in Westlake are shocked and horrified by what happened to Franziska. I saw a comment from someone who said: “If Howard goes to jail he will be lauded for murdering a young white girl!” How sad. This says more about the commentator than the inmates he/she has never met.

Often our reality is an unreality. We need to be coachable and open to learning, not just blaming, judging and shaming. We have to inform ourselves about all the victims in this crime: Franziska’s early and nonsensical death, her sister losing her big sister, and their mom and dad losing their eldest child, and also how Oliver has damaged the life of his own family, his wife and their two young children.

May we find ourselves reaching out to others to create an environment of “your child is my child” while all the children are alive, not only posthumously. May Franziska be free of human suffering and peaceful, her soul intact. Every three days in South Africa a near identical rape and murder happens. We need to do something where we are, with what we have.

This afternoon I tracked down Oliver’s wife and his very young, innocent and playful daughters. His wife’s grief is raw and real too. She did not choose this, and his crime is not a reflection on her. When we hashtag “your child is my child” we should include these little girls and their young mom, unconditionally. This is how we will transform our country with leadership.

Sonn is a mother and social

activist