Dear South Africa,

 Increase empathy.

Kind regards, Terence

P.S. Sorry, I’ve just realised that you may not know what I mean.

Here’s the deal – it really shouldn’t need an explanation or a justification. I shouldn’t have to show you why we need to be open to the idea that other people are complete and complex human beings who don’t deserve to be undermined, insulted, embarrassed, made to feel unsafe or treated as a sub-category in any way.

 I shouldn’t have to explain that if I am doing something that makes someone else uncomfortable, I should stop doing that thing – even if I don’t understand why it makes that person uncomfortable.

 I shouldn’t have to tell men that we have zero right to women’s bodies. I shouldn’t have to tell white people that they need to respect black bodies – and I shouldn’t have to explain why feeling up my natural and ethnic hair is massively disrespectful.

I shouldn’t have to explain that poor people don’t want to or deserve to be poor, or that structural racism and Apartheid is still going strong, that patriarchy and misogyny are still doing their awful work.

I shouldn’t have to explain all of this because if we just listened to each other, we would know all these things. That’s where empathy really starts – listening to each other, and accepting what we all have to say about our lives.

 Clearly, the fact that I have to explain all these things means that we haven’t been doing that. So in 2018, let’s start doing it.

Let’s increase empathy.

[For more Dear South Africa letters, click here]