A well-known drag queen from the Athlone area was murdered in a most gruesome way last week.
It was a few days after the Cape Town Pride Festival when Adnaan Davids’ body was found along the N2 in Bokmakierie.
The 30-year-old had been stabbed numerous times in the face, chest and a stick had been violently inserted into his behind.
It is that detail that leads his family to believe that it was a hate crime, which confuses me, if that is indeed the case.
Flamboyant drag queens have always been part of the Cape Flats landscape.
Mostly innocent, they have added to the colour of an already-colourful community.
There is absolutely nothing to hate about a lifestyle that has little to no impact on the lives of others.
But even if there were objections to him as a person, why was his life so cheap?
In fact, how is it that life in general has become so cheap in our communities, where children, women and the elderly are being murdered?
We have gone from protecting the vulnerable among us, to either targeting them, or accepting that they are the targets of cruel monsters.
And then we go on to protect those monsters and justify their actions.
But if we tolerate that, then we must also accept that one day, a cruel monster who is a stranger to us, will see us as targets also.