“South African women experience mental health problems more acutely than men due to a complex interplay of factors including high rates of violence and abuse, socio-economic challenges, and the disproportionate burden of caregiving responsibilities.”
On the 3rd of August 2018, a young law student at Rhodes University took her own life.
Khensani Maseko, who was just 23 years old, had endured sexual violence at the hands of a fellow student. Her decision to take her own life came just days after she had reported the incident, which had occurred three months prior, to the authorities at the university.
Unable to bear the pain, she travelled home to Johannesburg with her family to seek mental health support. On that cold August morning, she wrote on her Instagram page: “No one deserves to be raped!”, and just hours later, she would end her young life. Following her death, protests ignited across various South African universities, with students demanding greater investment in mental health support services.
Earlier this year, on the 8th of January, Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey, who was serving as the Vice President for Student Affairs at Lincoln University in the state of Missouri in the United States, tragically took her own life after being subjected to bullying by the university’s leadership.
Like Khensani, Dr. Candia-Bailey had reported the struggles that she was battling with weeks prior, and just days before she ended her life, she had sent an email out to several people detailing her deteriorating mental health due to the toxic work environment she was forced to navigate.
As with the case of Khensani, Dr. Candia-Bailey’s untimely death resulted in protests and a national discussion on the treatment of Black women in academia.
These two cases may have occurred in two different geographical contexts, at different times, and for different reasons.
But there is a common denominator between them that cannot be ignored – two Black women, having endured traumatic events and feeling unsupported, opted to take their own lives.
