September was Women’s Month in SA and I wrote about some of the women who were murdered during that month. One of those victims was Jesse Hess who was raped and murdered and her grandfather also murdered. The Police suspected Jesse’s cousin was the perpetrator but felt they did not have sufficient evidence and so they decided to wait until the suspect committed another crime with the same pattern. He did.

The man has been arrested and appeared in court charged with rape, aggravated robbery and attempted murder following an attack on a 16-year-old this week. He is suspected in the assault on another woman as well. The police decided it was worth sacrificing another woman yet sacrificed at least two. He is finally in custody, now we must hope our criminal justice system can manage to convict him.

It says so much about the misogyny endemic in SA that the death of other women was an acceptable trade off for his capture.

In that same blog I also mentioned the rape and murder of UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana. Her murderer was convicted last week and has been sentenced to 3 consecutive life sentences.

If you can stomach it, here is a link to a transcript of his confession.

I hope he rots in jail.

This misogyny does not only affect South Africa, it is international. The police in Minneapolis just announced that an internal review of sexual assault cases turned up an estimated 1,700 untested rape kits from as far back as the 1990s, a backlog that officials say could take at least two years to clear.

The revelation of the untested kits comes one year after the discovery of widespread failings in the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault in Minnesota which spurred changes by police departments and county prosecutors throughout the state. Minnesota police frequently struggled to investigate cases of sex assault in the years reviewed, often failing to interview witnesses, collect evidence or even assign detectives in cases in which the victim was drinking, the months long investigation found.

But I assume that most of the victims are women and the majority of the police are men who either did not value the safety of these women or feel they deserved justice.

The world has a long way to go to reach equality between genders.

In fairness the violence and crime in SA is not always against women. I read a post on Facebook from a man who was hosting friends for dinner on Friday night when one of the couples there received a phone call from kidnappers who had their 19 year old son and two other lads as hostages and were demanding R8k in ransom. The police were completely ineffective but the guests contacted a Muslim security firm and despite it being the time they would normally be in Mosque they arrived in minutes. They were still wearing their religious garments but they were so effective and clued in to what they were up against. They hacked into the boy’s phone. The boys were left on their own briefly and managed to escape and were rescued. It must have been terrifying for all involved.

I have written many times about the dire state our State Owned Enterprises and this has definitely not improved. Last Friday the employees of South African Airways declared they were going on strike and rather than deal with the potential chaos of managing with a skeleton staff or bringing in untrained temporary staff, SAA cancelled all flights on Friday and Saturday. International flights resumed today.

SAA estimate a daily loss of R50 million per day and that if the strike continues then they will fold. The airline is more than R40 billion in debt, and it’s failing to generate enough revenue to launch a recovery. The recent strike action now has the potential to finish the company off for good. It’s understood that SAA will struggle to pay worker salaries at the end of the month.

On Monday the Springbok Rugby team did a bus tour through Cape Town and some of the suburbs.

Much of the city turned out to celebrate their success.

Their World Cup success has made so many people feel positive about the hope of our multicultural society being more tolerant of each other. Hopefully it helps in that regard and the magic lasts.

Work has been very busy and stressful. We had several workshops and I am now involved in 3 different work streams. We are also doing a bid for another client and had to spend a bit of time giving input to that. I had worked a lot of overtime and intended to leave early on Friday but we had a meeting which ran over and then I still had to do my status reports so I left about 5 despite getting in just after 7am.

On Saturday I had a pajama day and did absolutely nothing. Lola woke me at 6am. That is when my alarm goes off during the week and she obviously wanted a cuddle like she gets most mornings. I was not best pleased.

Norm got up very early as Navajo had a chiropractor appointment at 8:45 and it’s a long drive there. Norm has been working with Navajo to get him to use his new ramp to get into our new truck. We were worried that Navajo would refuse it and he was a bit wobbly going up but he used it!

We had no milk for a coffee so I decided to lie in bed with the Pomeranians and cats. On his way home Norm bought milk and croissants and when he got in he cooked breakfast and we had a yummy bacon and egg croissant.

I decided to watch a film in the afternoon while Norm was having a nap.

I randomly chose the film ‘Fractured’ as it was on the recommended list on Netflix.

I don’t want to give anything away, it was a bit of an emotional roller coaster! It was nothing like I expected. The acting was a bit sketchy but I still really enjoyed it. Don’t get distracted at the end, it has a major twist. I give it a strong 4 Kitten Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

We started out the week trying to keep it low carb but that failed miserably. Norm cooked chicken kebabs and sweet potatoes with fried mushrooms and coleslaw and it was yummy.

The rest of the week was takeaways. I had sushi on Friday night but it arrived so discombobulated that it wasn’t photo ready. Oops. It still tasted delicious once I reconstructed it.

Today I was supposed to go to drum rehearsals but the dogs woke us at 6am and Norm and I both managed to fall back to sleep and only woke at 10am so it was too late to shower and drive there for 10.30 so I gave it a miss. Norm brought me coffee in bed and Lola and I snuggled.

We have a super king bed and she chose to balance on top of my bent knee. Why do cats choose the most awkward spots to sit?

Pixie sprawled across my lap while I played games on my iPad.

You can barely tell which end of her is which. I almost always have at least one animal perched on top of me.

Today is a stunning day with very little wind. We have had insane winds most of the week and the calm is nice.

In the afternoon Norm went to the shops and I put a chicken curry in the slow cooker for tomorrow’s dinner. Norm tried a new low carb recipe tonight.

It was delicious but next time we will use fillet as it was a bit tough. I suspect he used stewing steak. Nevertheless it was very tasty.

I hope you have all had a lovely weekend, mine has been very lazy and relaxing.

This week we are off half a day on Thursday to attend our year end function. It will hopefully make the week pass a bit faster.

Have a wonderful week. Until next time Kisses from the Kitten xoxoxo