Miracle?

I fully intended to write about something positive today, but just had to share this.

This week I had a dental appointment in South Kensington, Johannesburg. When I was finished I visited with some friends who have businesses in a small local shopping centre. As I was exiting the one business I noticed the owner of another small business behaving in an agitated fashion in the doorway of her party shop.

I later found out that apparently what had happened was that a woman entered the store but never pulled the security gate shut behind her. Inside the store she said she wanted to buy some sweets but just needed to check if she had enough money. Then a guy, who was waiting outside the store in a wheelchair, jumped out of his wheelchair and rushed into the store. Apparently the couple then started arguing and tussled their way right through into the kitchen area of the shop. At that point the flabbergasted owner pressed her panic button and rushed to the door to shout for help.

This was when they both exited the store again, the woman shouting that the man had her wallet and the man throwing it at her just before he hopped back into his wheelchair. The woman kept shouting that the man had 'started with me on the bus already' and that she had had R500 in her wallet which the man had taken. Throughout her theatrics she was flashing the contents of the wallet at the gawping bystanders, of which I was one, clearly showing us the money was still in the wallet.

While everyone was still trying to figure out what had just happened, and discussion turned toward calling the police to help the woman whose money had been ‘stolen’, the pair moved up the street, apart but quite obviously together, heading in the same direction, seemingly arguing as they went along.

The owner of the store had her handbag in the kitchen when they manoeuvred their way into it arguing vociferously but, when she checked the bag, its contents appeared to be intact. Perhaps if she had not been so frightened by their behaviour that she pressed the panic button they would have stolen it or actually robbed her of her takings?

Whatever their intention was, I am still marvelling at the miracle of the wheelchair-bound man who ran into, and out of, that shop! HA!!

One thing most South Africans have learned is that criminals do not belong to a specific gender, race group or age group, so we try always to be vigilant.


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Spotted ... A pig

The majority of South Africans consider themselves to be law-abiding citizens but sometimes one has to wonder what their definition of a crime is.

Do we believe that crime is only something major, such as rape, murder or fraud? Or do we understand the concept that a crime is anything that is done in contravention of a statute prohibiting that particular act?

If we look at crime in the narrowest sense of the definition I think we will find that every single one of us has committed crime to a greater or lesser degree: Littering; taking stationery home from work and never returning it; slandering others when we sit around gossiping; drinking in public places or whilst we are driving (and I literally mean the steering wheel in one hand and the booze in the other); speeding; parking illegally; plastering posters on streetlight poles, using our cell phones whilst driving. The list of ‘petty’ crimes is endless but, no matter how we might like to whitewash them, they do remain ‘crimes’ in the true sense of the word.

So, now that I’ve established that there is probably no one, other than suckling babes, who hasn’t committed some sort of crime, I ask the question: Is it a crime to warn others, en masse, about roadblocks or speed traps as does PigSpotter? His lawyer seems to think not.

I can recall the drivers of cars on the road flashing their headlights to warn oncoming traffic of a speed trap or roadblock ahead throughout my life. Hell, I’ve even done it on occasion. My understanding then, and now, is that this was an illegal act. What is the difference between that and posting warnings of roadblocks and speed traps to a social networking site?

It is human nature to want to get the better of authority, and authority figures, from time to time. But there are legal ways to do it.

I pose the question: How would PigSpotter, and his/her thousands of followers feel, if criminals who had just raped or murdered one of their loved ones used those postings to bypass any law enforcement agencies out on the roads? How would they feel if a speedster wiped their entire family out in one horrific accident? How would they feel if someone they loved had been car-jacked and forced into the boot of a car and the one thing that could have saved them was that speed trap or roadblock but the criminals, forewarned, took measures to avoid it? How would they feel?

I’m just asking what I believe are valid questions in a country where rapes, murders, car-jackings and speed-related accidents have become something of a national sport.

PigSpotter, whoever and wherever you are, you are totally naïve if you believe that only law-abiding citizens follow your postings. Your most avid followers are probably criminals. Does that make you feel proudly South African?


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East vs North

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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From Apartheid to Democracy

Hi there.  I was born in South Africa during the Apartheid era.   My parents were middle-class white South Africans and, as a result, my life was generally very comfortable, with domestic workers to clean the house and gardeners to take care of the garden.  In those days these adult men and women were referred to as 'the garden boy' and 'the girl', terms that black South Africans rightly found very insulting.  It is with embarrassment that I admit that until I started work at the age of 18 I never paid much attention to politics and I seldom questioned the policy of separate segregation that was applied in South Africa by the Nationalist Government.

Then the mining corporate, Anglo American, came into my life in the form of my first employer and it was like a light bulb exploding in my consciousness.  Suddenly I was interacting with people from other race groups on an equal footing and whatever racist tendencies I may have had flew out of the window.  I often wonder what my political viewpoint would have been today if I had not gone to work for Anglo American where we were all treated as equals.

When the 1976 student riots happened in Soweto I was in the position of traveling by suburban train to get to and from work.  As I sat in the comfortable compartment one day with a stone-shattered window beside me, the thought came to me:  “If I had been born black in South Africa I would have thrown the first stone.”

For me the 1976 riots were a turning point in my life, empathising with the kids as I did, that caused me to have strongly divergent political views to most of my siblings and relatives.  Although I did not become an activist I certainly became a black empathizer.

As the years passed and I got older, fatter and hopefully a little wiser, change happened in South Africa.  Nelson Mandela was eventually released from jail.  South Africans voted for democracy for the first time in April 1994 and Nelson Mandela became our first democratically elected black president.

After the democratic elections, freedom of association became a reality for all South Africans.  In 1999, as a direct consequence of that freedom of association, my husband−whom I’ll call Mad Max in my blog−and I started fostering a three-year-old black child whose mother was not able to care for him for various reasons.  Here was a chance for us to give of ourselves as restitution for any hardship, directly or indirectly, that we had caused to our fellow South Africans from other race groups during the Apartheid years.  Our beautiful boy has been with us for eleven years now and although he can be more than a handful at times we would not want to be without him in our lives.

The South African Constitution, which is hailed as one of the most progressive in the world, enshrines certain rights.  Not least of these rights is: ”Everyone has the right to life.”  Everyone, therefore, includes the most vicious and cold-blooded criminals of which South Africa has more than a few.

We are told that the death penalty does not prevent anyone from committing heinous acts of rape and murder.  Supposing this is true, is it just a coincidence that prior to the abolishment of the death penalty there were an average 7036 recorded murders per year between 1950 and 1993.  Since 1994, with the abolishment of the death penalty in 1995, there have been an average 24 206 recorded murders per year.  Part of me screams out for the reinstatement of the death penalty and another part of me says: Would you be prepared to be the one pressing the button that results in the execution?  The answer to that question is a very vehement no.

 

Our crime stats are very scary indeed, and the bad news is that almost every single South African has been a victim of crime in one way or another.  Some families have, tragically, experienced the entire gamut of murder, rape, car-jacking and robbery to name just a few categories of crime prevalent in South Africa.

During our two decade marriage, Mad Max and I have been more fortunate than most.  He once had a briefcase stolen out of his car and on one occasion we disturbed robbers who had managed to gain entry to our home when we had nipped out, very briefly, to buy some groceries.  In both instances our losses were negligible and we didn’t even file insurance claims.  There were a couple of other really inconsequential incidents that weren’t even reported to the police.

Our one and only encounter with ‘serious’ crime was four days after I started staying home after being medically boarded in 2000.  When we could least afford it, Mad Max was car-jacked−at gunpoint− in our garage as he was parking the car.  The entire incident was over so fast that it was almost unreal.  All Mad Max could remember about any of the car-jackers was ‘they smelled as though they had just bathed’.  That wasn’t particularly helpful to the police as they do not have sniffer dogs trained to trace that ‘freshly showered’ smell of the average criminal.

It is probably safe to say that every one of our relatives, friends or acquaintances, of every race, sex and creed, has been affected by crime to a greater or lesser extent in the 16 years since the 1994 elections.

Yet South Africa remains the country I love.  The place where I feel an affinity with all it’s people (except the criminal element).

South Africa is the place where I can tell if its going to rain by the smell of the wind; the place where winter is more of an illusion than a reality; the place where the sun shines brightly for more days in the year than not and, sadly, the place where you could be killed for a shiny coin simply because you have it and the other person doesn’t.

Yes, the crime rate is high in South Africa, but so are the hopes of law-abiding citizens.  And where there is hope things can only get better.


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