Carol’s Column

Making a start is important in effort to combat crime

The other morning I drove to work as the sky was lightening pink in the east. An Egyptian goose high on its lamppost perch unfurled its wings and lifted its head to gaze at the traffic below. A creepered wall glinted red as autumn leaves caught the first touches of pale sun.

The scene was peaceful.

I listened to the news and heard of a 13-year-old girl who'd been shot dead in Maseru, Lesotho, while driving with her mother. A perfect beginning to a day was fouled by violence.

Last week, a friend was shot dead as he reversed his car into a garage, another man, prominent in a taxi association, was murdered while driving in Sandton and a third fights for his life in a hospital after being tortured and shot by burglars.

In Cape Town a woman was murdered and left mutilated lying in her garden, and another was brutalised and strangled in her flat.

At Bruma, a car was hijacked, the father pulled from the vehicle, his two-year-old abducted by the robbers. Thank God, she was found in the abandoned vehicle a few hours later.

On Monday, my husband's car was broken into for the fifth time in three months and the other night my son's car was burgled. Eight other cars in the street were broken into simultaneously.

Yesterday, a reader phoned from Vereeniging to say he wanted to enter one of this newspaper's competitions but he couldn't tell us his Travel Club number because he'd just had a robbery. A gang had broken into his shop, held a gun to his head and stolen his wallet, among other things. This was the third time he'd been robbed in two months by men with guns.

He spoke in a matter-of-fact way. Just another event in a normal day.

It was chilling.

And then he said: “I'm lucky, I'm okay.”

That was more chilling. Men held a gun to his head, threatened him with death and he said: “I'm lucky, I'm okay.”

In truth, he was. As was the toddler in the hijacking. Luckier than the 13-year-old murdered in Maseru, than those shot dead for a car, the keys to a safe, or because they might hold different opinions about the way a taxi service should be run.

Equally chilling is that everyone has a similar story, knows somebody who has been robbed or murdered.

It's enough. But what to do? How do you fight people who carry guns, with no value system, to whom life is worthless and who kill without hesitation?

We turn our homes into fortresses and arm ourselves. We drive with cars locked and ignore traffic lights and stop streets in case we're mugged or hijacked. We call for the reintroduction of the death sentence.

Anarchy and violence rule.

Our society is ugly, and we, by default, become ugly too.

There are two things which could and should be done immediately. The first is to increase, enable and improve our police force so that we have effective policing. The second is to ban guns and make the carrying of a gun a serious offence punishable with lengthy imprisonment. Finally, forget the death sentence. Besides its gross immorality, it has been proved not to be a deterrent.

Cynics will say that all these measures take time. Of course they do, but we must start somewhere.

A friend has formed a group to man the phones and help with the administrative work at their local police station to free the police to fight serious crime.

That's a start.

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