It’s not every day one hears about a person dropping everything to venture inside a property engulfed in flames to save the occupants.
We tend to plough a lot of energy into talking about what’s wrong or broken as the country seemingly lurches from one crisis to the next.
And in so doing, cast our gaze away from celebrating the good stuff being done by people who go to great lengths to achieve something for the greater good.
That’s precisely what happened recently when Fagre Davids, burnt and almost overcome by smoke, shouted from his balcony in Cape Town: “Please help me, my daughter is still inside!”
A passing team of city water and sanitation workers saw the blaze and wasted no time repurposing their equipment and truck carrying non-potable water — used to repair blocked sewers — to rescue the adults and children inside. Among them was two-month-old Rahma Davids, who had been trapped in a bedroom.
Going the extra mile need not be a life-threatening exercise. Even the smallest act of kindness or compassion can make our country a better place.
Then they extinguished the blaze. Beyond the call of duty. The stuff of heroes.
It was also collaboration — between a security company, police, community association, private investigators and the public — that led to a breakthrough in the hunt for a suspect after high school teacher Kirsten Kluyts was murdered during an event at the Sandton Sports Club in Johannesburg.
“Without the public letting us view their footage, we would not have been able to put this case together. So it really was the community coming together, helping us solve the case,” said security company 24/7 media liaison officer Antoinette Nothling.
And what about the innovative detective work that culminated in the 6,548-year sentence handed down in October to an online sex predator from Welkom in the Free State, who groomed boys and shared thousands of child pornography images on the dark web?
Capt Bez Bezuidenhout from the serial and electronics crime investigation unit managed to crack the case in an unusual way. He spotted a male thumb in a photograph and managed to extract enough information to run a fingerprint search. He hit the jackpot. And so, the net closed in on Mario Guisti, 36, ultimately caught in the act sharing child porn.
TimesLIVE Premium reported this week on all these achievements. It’s heart-warming.
There are many unseen heroes among us. Let’s give them the credit they deserve for a job well done.
Going the extra mile need not be a life-threatening exercise. Even the smallest act of kindness or compassion can make our country a better place. Let’s start, by doing something kind today.
To all the unseen heroes out there ... we salute you.
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