South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with murders occurring with unnerving regularity. In 2021/22 police recorded 25,181 murders. Up from 19,972 murders the previous year.
As crimes such as robbery, hijackings and murder happen around us on a daily basis, we no longer express shock and dismay at news headlines reporting on this. What is worrying is, while we become accustomed to the crimes that strike closer to home, we have somehow lost the core of what made us South Africans be loved and adored by the world — ubuntu — humanity.
Over the past two days, TimesLIVE has shared two shocking stories of community members pouncing on victims of horrific accidents — robbing them of their belongings as they lay helpless — dying.
One of these was a truck driver who was shot dead in Marite outside Hazyview on Monday.
Police released a statement, detailing how the truck driver, Petros Jay Magagula, had seemingly tried to avoid a hijacking when he was shot at and crashed into tree.
One of his passengers escaped unharmed, while another was injured.
In a morally intact society, community members would have rushed to the aid of the injured truck driver, but this was not the case for Petros. Instead, a group of community members who flocked to the scene shortly after the incident, chose to loot the dairy products that were inside the truck as Petros’s lifeless body lay on the steering wheel.
Barely 24 hours later, a similar scenario unfolded in KwaZulu-Natal. Two people were allegedly robbed as they lay trapped in an overturned vehicle north of Durban on Wednesday morning.
Times are tough for many, and though more people struggle to make ends meet, this does not mean that we should lose our humanity.
Passing motorists called for help when they witnessed pedestrians robbing the occupants who were still trapped in the wreckage. Police reported how one thief grabbed the injured woman’s bag, but she managed to wrest it from him. The thieves only fled when passing vehicles stopped to assist.
But sadly, this is nothing new. Who can forget the harrowing incident of fitness trainer Sbahle Mpisane in 2018, when a man who witnessed her horrific car crash detailed how an unknown woman snatched the fitness star’s weave from her head as she lay in her car, terribly injured.
The man labelled what he saw an “inhumane act”.
These three incidents are just the tip of the iceberg and questions need to be asked about people losing their moral compass.
Times are tough for many, and though more people struggle to make ends meet, this does not mean that we should lose our humanity. Poverty and desperation should never be the reason we seemingly can longer distinguish right from wrong.
In another incident, TimesLIVE reporter Kgaugelo Masweneng detailed how just a few days ago, she and a colleague, Alaister Russell, were victims of a hijacking at gunpoint in broad daylight on a busy street in Alexandra.
As Masweneng shared her horrific experience of being forced out of a car at gunpoint and having her wedding ring pulled off her finger and all her valuables taken, she detailed how the most troubling thing was how schoolchildren who witnessed her ordeal were seemingly unmoved. She described how there was noise and whistling that came from the children who were probably in primary school — whistling in excitement of what they had just witnessed.
None that she saw ran for fear of stray bullets or screamed at the sight of such an injustice. They were neither scared nor shocked, writes Masweneng.
This paints a picture of how we have totally lost the plot as a society and are grooming children who are desensitised to violence and crime. This is the society we look forward to tomorrow unless we return to the roots of what makes us South African.
The moral decay and social ills we are seeing unfold cannot be eternally blamed on the government nor apartheid, but it is about us. Since 2002, we have spoken about the Moral Regeneration Movement. It is time that the aims espoused by the movement, launched in 2002 by then deputy president Jacob Zuma, be resuscitated. The movement aimed to deal with building the family, developing moral leadership, combating crime and corruption, and promoting values in education.
Morals were and remain key to the sustenance of South Africa’s democracy and social cohesion .
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