To forgive or not to forgive?

The Monitor Editor | Tuesday November 1, 2022 06:00

The star has previously been in the news accused of being violent towards women and the particular one that went viral is when he was kicking a woman at an airport in Kenya.

The video left a lot of people in shock and disbelief, he later apologised and tried to explain his violent action, but he had angered too many people who seemed not interested in his apology.

A day before his performance, there was some engagement on Facebook, with some pleading with the government to not allow him into the country, as a way of condemning the incident where he was accused of assaulting a woman.

In 2019, South Africa banned a musician who enjoys international recognition from performing in their country following an outcry from women’s rights groups. His South African shows were ultimately cancelled.

The ‘Stop Koffi Olomide Collective’ stood its ground and finally put pressure on authorities to take action. Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is one of the serious challenges that we face as different communities worldwide, and while many organisations have been hard at work trying to end GBV, cases keep increasing by the day! The Facebook campaign for people to boycott the concert, a day before the show when people would have already bought tickets, seemed to be nothing more than just talk, without expecting any outcome.

GBV is a serious issue and we should all stand together to fight it, but we should properly organise ourselves so that people can take us seriously. The show has been hyped for a couple of months and the announcement that Olomide is going to headline the show was made many months ago, perhaps that is when the campaign could have started.

There is the element of the female artist who wanted to organise a showstopper and found it fit to include Olomide. While her sights on making her show great were not wrong some thought she should have done her research on the artist before engaging him. We need to be clear and tread carefully when dealing with issues of GBV or violent individuals in general.

What are we saying once they have been found to have abused a woman/women in the past? Should we throw them to wolves and forget them or try to find ways of rehabilitating such individuals? Should the person attend anger management classes and try to be a better person, or are we then supposed to hold on to their past without evidence of any recent violent acts? These are some of the questions that we need to ask ourselves because we need to end this horror, GBV.