I have just watched a video clip of a father in Bryanston who became part of South Africa’s crime statistics after he had stopped next to the road to try and comfort his baby who was in a baby chair on the back seat.
In the clip, you can see the father stopping next to the road, walking around the vehicle to open the back door to comfort his crying baby on the back seat. As the father is doing this, another vehicle stops next to his car, two armed men jump out and rob the father at gunpoint. As the man is still trying to comprehend what just happened, they run away, jump into their car with their loot, and speed off.
Last week, on Thursday, 20 February, another family was hijacked while filling up their vehicle at a Ruimsig petrol station. This time the hijackers were successful and fled with the family’s car. There were also two other incidents earlier this year in which the victims were taken with the vehicles, forced to give their PIN number while the attackers drew money from their accounts. They were lucky though, as they escaped the ordeal with their lives.
This made me think about a conversation I had with one of my journalists, after he had written the article on the heartbreaking hijacking at the Eagle’s Landing Shopping Centre on 17 January. The woman and her husband went out for dinner, and on their way out, they were approached by armed men who wanted their vehicle. During a scuffle, the woman was shot and she died on scene. The attackers fled without taking anything.
In a follow-up on the incident, the journalist visited the bereaved husband, and after returning from this interview, he was dejected and demotivated. His first words to me were, “How did it become so easy to just shoot someone?” Worst of all, I could not give him an answer.
When did it become so easy to take someone else’s life, just for the sake of taking it? How did it become acceptable to walk up to people, point a gun at their faces and demand their possessions, just because you want them? We are living in a society where violence is becoming an everyday occurrence, and crime is spiralling out of control. We do not even bat an eyelid when we hear about someone having been killed for a cellphone, a car or a hundred rand or two. It is not news anymore when school children are being accosted for their backpacks or bicycles, making me believe that a career in crime is a lucrative one in South Africa, leaving the rest of the citizens living in constant fear and uncertainty.
For me, it is a bitter pill to swallow, knowing that our freedom and right to live are being taken away by criminals, resulting in us being prisoners in our own homes.
Until next week …
