How many of the best South African talent must the country lose to violent crime?
How many ordinary people, whose loss is as tragic as someone well-known, must perish unnecessarily?
On Wednesday night, another bright footballing talent was robbed from the country when Kaizer Chiefs defender and South Africa under-17 and under-23 international centreback Luke Fleurs was gunned down in a hijacking in Honeydew, west of Johannesburg.
In January last year it was South Africa’s under-20 captain, the talented Stellenbosch FC defender Oshwin Andries, who fell victim to violent crime when he died from stab wounds a week after an altercation.
In 2014 it was Senzo Meyiwa. The murder of the then Bafana Bafana captain at girlfriend Kelly Khumalo's house in Vosloorus, and the saga of the investigation and present trial has gripped and agonised the nation.
There have been so many well-known South African lives taken by crime it would be impossible to list them all.
It brings it home when someone famous falls victim to violent crime. It reinforces the awareness of how random such incidents are and how it is possible for anyone to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and to be a target of the criminals ravaging a socially and economically troubled country.
It hits home more when the victim is young.
Meyiwa was 30 and on his way to making the Bafana goalkeeper’s jersey his own, or at least shared with legendary national gloveman Itumeleng Khune.
Andries was 19, impressing for Stellenbosch and tipped as a future Bafana star.
Fleurs was 24 and, after a wayward period where his career slid as he was released in September from SuperSport United — where he showed great potential in 70 games after signing from first division Ubuntu in 2018 — he was training hard and near a debut for Chiefs, the team he joined in October.
Football has had many tragic losses. It is the nature of the sport — the most-supported in the world and which attracts the biggest crowds, and stokes some of sport’s greatest passions — that it can experience tragedy, whether in stadiums or to its stars, who are mostly from a working class or poor background.
There have been so many well-known South African lives taken by crime it would be impossible to list them all.
In the 1990s, Bafana Bafana legend and Chiefs’ darling of the fans Doctor Khumalo lost his father, Eliakim “Pro” Khumalo — himself an Amakhosi legend — in a hijacking.
Fatal victims in other sports include former Springboks Solly Tyibilika in 2011 and Lukas van Biljon in 2023, world champion boxer Mzukisi Sikali in 2005, former heavyweight champion Corrie Sanders in 2012 and South African female boxing champion Leighandre Jegels in 2019.
In music there was Lucky Dube in 2007 and rapper AKA last year.
Even in football, Meyiwa, Andries and Fleurs do not complete the recent list. Another former Chiefs player, Jeffrey Ntuka, 26, was stabbed in the street in Kroonstad in 2012. Marc Batchelor was gunned down in an alleged assassination in 2019. Zimbabwean former AmaZulu and Bidvest Wits captain Charles Yohane was killed in a hijacking in Soweto in 2022.
But Meyiwa, Andries and Fleurs’ killings stand out.
In South Africa, the scourge of violent crime seems to make footballers — from tough neighbourhoods, their relative wealth gained in a short space of time and sometimes living fast lifestyles — more vulnerable to violent crime.
The profile of Meyiwa and the huge scrutiny of the case for more than a decade, and the young age and footballing potential of Andries and Fleurs, and the closeness in time of their killings, rammed home the sense of loss to soccer and sport in the country of excellent talent and bright young human beings.
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