While tuberculosis, diabetes and HIV are the medical epidemics which are at the forefront of our mortality rates, is the pervasive pandemic of moral absence that plagues the nation.
A desktop search of unspeakable tragedy in the past few days bears bloody testimony to this.
Two alleged gunmen linked to the killing of seven family members at Hlokozi in Highflats, KwaZulu-Natal, a month ago, were ironically en route to a cleansing ritual in Umlazi when they were killed as they attempted to shoot police officers closing in on them on Saturday. On Tuesday, two other suspects died in a hail of bullets when they also engaged in a shootout with police.
On Sunday, mortuary staff had to collect eight bodies in Orange Farm south of Johannesburg, including that of a three-year-old boy. This after a tavern owner allegedly shot family members of a patron he had an altercation with, then turned the gun on himself at Mokokotlong informal settlement.
The incident came after the patron went to the local tavern to buy alcohol and found it had already closed. A plea to reopen and supply him with liquor turned into an ugly fight, but he went back to his home to continue celebrations after lobola negotiations. The tavern owner, however, followed him and indiscriminately opened fire on the family members. He then drove back to his own house where an inquest will reveal whether it was his conscience that prompted him to end his life.
The issue of conscience is also likely to be considered when a Limpopo mother appeared in the Sekhukhune magistrate’s court on Monday on charges of alleged neglect. This after her baby died after her mother left her in the care of her 12-year-old sibling while she went on a drinking spree. The baby's life was shorter than the term for which she was carried in her mother’s womb.
While the cause of death was unspecified at this stage, and the mother’s emotional state or whether she suffers from alcoholism yet to be disclosed, the consequences of the mother’s actions will play out in the life of the 12-year-old sibling, the community and society in general.
So too will the impact of the actions of Siphosoxolo Myekethe, the man arrested in connection with the massacre of 18 people in Lusikisiki, who will make a second appearance in the Lusikisiki magistrate’s court on Tuesday.
Myekethe, 45, who served time for murder and escaping from custody, is facing 18 charges of murder and one count of possession of an unlicensed firearm, an AK47 assault rifle, when he and others almost wiped out an entire family at Ngobozana village allegedly over the issue of stock theft.
A 33-year-old man who had previous brushes with the law over domestic violence-related cases, will also appear in court on Tuesday for Saturday’s fatal stabbing of seven family members — including his mother, uncle, two children aged two and six, as well as two elderly women — in the Bethany area of Bergville, KwaZulu-Natal.
The reality is South Africa is overcome with predators who live only in the present moment and who dehumanise anyone apart from themselves, yet there is no cohesive government strategy to address this.
The issue of understanding crime through the lens of poverty is multi-layered and, in a country like South Africa, ingrained in our social fabric of culture, religion, politics and the economy.
That moral poverty is endemic speaks to the failures of our government to address the challenges that debilitate every facet of South African life.
The reality is South Africa is overcome with predators who live only in the present moment and who dehumanise anyone apart from themselves, yet there is no cohesive government strategy to address this.
There are pockets of political outrage at appropriate times for audio and visual sound bites, but these are hapless in the face of an onslaught of AK47 and A1 rifles on innocents.
There are visits and condemnations, but this does nothing for the families reeling from the injustice meted out by the pervasive and powerful morally bankrupt criminals.
Governance academic and author William Gumede in August 2022 drafted a working paper on strengthening democratic morality to undo moral breakdown. He pointed out that South Africa’s overarching societal good moral values, whether set by democracy, culture or religion, which govern individuals’ behaviour, intimate spaces, day-to-day interaction with others, or the conduct of politics, business and government, have in many instances been corrupted.
The system governing our behaviour, actions and decisions to not harm others, abuse and steal public resources, in essence our morality, mirrored the government of the day, and as the six volumes of the state capture reports woefully reflect, we are morally ruined.
But this is not to say we should continue to accept this status quo.
What is necessary is sustained moral outrage and a collective demand for a strong impetus for change from the government, to steer South Africa’s moral compass away from the trajectory into complete lawlessness.
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