The day the tension snapped

Living in South Africa is extremely stressful no matter what colour you are; how much money you have (or don't); how educated you are and how old you are. The fact of living in a country where crime is rampant and is particularly prolific in government, means that the lawless and ruthless behave with impunity and everyone is a potential victim. Collectively we are all the victims of the government and the Gupta's as our economy spirals down the toilet and the cost of living rises like a tsunami and threatens to drown us.  Individually we all either know someone personally or have ourselves been the victim of a crime whether it be a hijacking, bag snatching, household robbery, violent crime which can include all of the above with a gun or knife added to the mix. Victims of rape or other physically violent crimes may be given counselling but for the rest of us we just need to shoulder the problem and get over it and on with life. As a result of this, most of us live in a state of fear that we hardly even acknowledge either to ourselves or to anyone else. It is this state of fear, of heightened sensitivity to potential danger that has caused us to over react to situations. The first signs of this that I noticed was the huge reaction to three separate incidents where the police chased down and shot dead hijackers and bank robbers in a space of two weeks. The public reaction was one of absolute joy! High praise for the "take no prisoners" action of the police flooded social media and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

The relief was short-lived and perhaps made us feel even more vulnerable as was shown by a horrific incident that recently occurred in my hometown.  The true events that took  place were completely different to what people assumed was taking place but the outcome was the same - two innocent men killed by a frenzied mob who were sick and tired of all the violence and crime that surrounds us.

The fake story was that two men had kidnapped a young girl and got her into their car. The members of the public stopped the kidnappers, saved the girl and beat the kidnappers to death and also found human body parts in a bag in the car which indicated that the men were working for a sangoma and that the girl was being taken to be used for muthi (traditional medicine).

The true story was that a father, accompanied by his friend, had fetched his mentally challenged young son from his school and, as the little boy had complained of being hungry, the father had left him in  the car with his friend and gone to buy the child something to eat. As the father walked off to the shop, the young boy started crying and shouting for his daddy and nothing the friend did could calm him down. As a result, passersby saw the child in distress, assumed the worst, and attacked the man in the car in order to "rescue" the child. A bystander who had seen what had actually happened tried to stop the mob and was killed for his troubles. Two innocent men lost their lives for nothing. No matter how you try and make excuses for the actions of the public, this would never have happened in a country where the people do not live in constant fear, fueled by anger, at the outrageous behaviour of the government and the helplessness we all feel to do anything about it.