A report in the newspaper this week has had me mulling over the reasons for the perceived difference in attitudes between those living in the wealthy northern suburbs of Johannesburg and those, like me, who live in the poorer eastern suburbs of Johannesburg.
There was a rather horrific story about a woman who was attacked in her own home in a ‘closed’ area. In South Africa a ‘closed’ area is an area, normally residential, where access can only be gained via a gate manned by security personnel 24/7. This woman, who was not identified, was apparently attacked by one of the very security guards who were hired to give her a sense of safety. Bleeding profusely from stab wounds, she ran to the doors of her neighbours in the complex, desperately seeking help.
At the first door she met with no response. At the second door she was told, by tenants peering from an upstairs window, to ‘lie down and keep quiet, the security company is coming’. These tenants were too scared to step out of their home to assist someone who was virtually bleeding to death on their doorstep!
How different it was in my ‘poor’ street a couple of months ago. At about 5.30 a.m. we were awoken by the sound of very loud banging and terrified screaming. My husband and I both leapt out of bed, still very confused by sleep that was clouding our heads and eyes. It was impossible to tell where the ruckus was coming from. I jumped up on the windowsill in our bedroom as agilely as a 56 year-old with very bad knees and a fused spine can do, and tried to peer over the wall into our next-door neighbours property. My husband headed for the front door wearing only his sleeping shorts.
I couldn’t see over the neighbours wall, despite standing on the windowsill, so clambered down as carefully as I could and hurried to join my husband at the front door.
The street was abuzz. There were the old people who live in the house directly opposite us. Their immediate neighbours from the one side were heading up the garden path opposite me. One of their neighbours from the other side of their property was busy removing a crowbar from the bonnet of his car that was parked on the pavement. My husband was in the middle of the road. Our neighbour from the other half of the pair of semi’s we occupy was in his yard. All of us were in our pj’s and in various stages of wakefulness.
Apparently four guys had simply taken a crowbar and tried to break down the front door of the old people’s house. Fortunately they woke up and started screaming and the perpetrators ran for their lives, taking off in two different directions. The old people said that in 49 years of living in their house this was the first attempted burglary they had been subjected to.
The people who came to help and offer assistance to these old white Portuguese residents were black, white and coloured. Our neighbours were under attack and, without thinking of our own safety, we arrived en masse to help.
After reading that newspaper report about the woman in the northern suburbs I have pondered what made us react differently when our neighbours were in trouble compared to those folk in the rich northern suburbs who simply huddled behind the safety of their four walls and urged the woman to “be quiet, help is on its way”?
Is it the fact that in our ‘poor’ street we don’t have a false sense of security? Daily we step out into our streets and walk them to get to shops, taxis and buses. We know our neighbourhood. We reach out to our neighbours in friendship and mutual trust, knowing that if trouble ever comes our way the only people we can truly rely on are each other. We know that criminals do not belong to a particular race, sex, age group or creed.
I would be interested in your comments about what you think could have caused those ‘rich’ folk to react so differently when an immediate neighbour was in need of assistance.
Personally, I am totally flummoxed as to why someone would deny real help and basic human compassion to a fellow human being in need.
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