Years ago, in the late 1990s, when someone was hijacked or there was a housebreaking, it would have made front page news.
Now, such crimes are par for the course. We live in a violent society and we watch TV that bombards us with violence.
You have to wonder if we are in the process of losing our humanity.
Talking about being desensitised, I gathered that many people in this country would not have been rocked by the news, last week, that a potential terror alert had been issued for South Africa.
This is after the mighty USA, on Tuesday (September 9), warned its citizens in South Africa of a ”specific, credible threat”.
The US Embassy said on its website that it had information that extremists may be targeting US interests in South Africa, possibly including US government facilities and other facilities identifiable with US business interests.
The warning came ahead of the anniversary of 9/11, a set of attacks in America on September 11, 2001, by Islamist extremist group al-Qaeda, which killed nearly 3 000 people.
Did the country panic when the alert was issued? Did people flee to their homes? Of course not — those who heard the news over the radio most likely just shrugged their shoulders and continued driving, avoiding potholes, beggars and hijackers.
The chances are very slim SA citizens would cower in terror at such news. After all, we are confronted by continuous alerts of violence and mayhem every day, so why not add a terrorist alert to our basket of daily worries?
After all, we are daily urged by the police to be alert to criminals hiding in the bushes, ready to pounce when we arrive home.
This is the society in which we live — you expect to be greeted by your dog licking your face or your wife giving you a kiss, not an idiot with a gun who thinks he is Rambo and that your hard-earned stuff belongs to him.
You are, thus, urged to remain alert as we head closer to our front gates, taking note of any shadow that seems out of place, frowning at a dog that barks out of tune or the guy that aimlessly wanders down the street.
In the end, by the time you slither your way through the automatic gate and safely into your house, it comes as a great relief to your already failing nervous system that you have not been shot or terrorised.
Yes, you also need to be alert when drawing money from the ATM, because some or other clever, no-good criminal has found a James Bond method of working out how to get hold of your card and pin number.
Then you are called on to be alert when driving to work or home from the bank, just in case a van loaded with enough gangsters to field a soccer squad is about to make your life a living hell.
You are warned to be alert when parking your car, even in a public place, because, yes, there is boogieman who has a fancy device that will jam your car remote to unlock it.
Grief, we even have to be alert when taking a test drive. Heard about that crazy story? Right here in Boksburg, a hopeful buyer was hijacked while taking a brand new Volkswagen Golf for a spin!
Can you imagine such insanity? One moment you are enjoying a smooth ride, checking out the knobs and dials and hearing the engine purr when, suddenly, a gang with some or other stupid name pushes you off the road as if they are in a Fast and Furious movie.
And yes, you have to be alert to power outages, which is like playing Russian Roulette with Eskom. After all, you never know when they are serious about a blackouts and a potential meltdown, so you hope daily that you are not going to be shot with a dose of involuntary darkness.
On top of it all, now we have to be alert to a meteorite apparently heading our way, our children becoming possessed because of Charlie Charlie and a global economic meltdown.
Thank you China for your economic instability, and thank you America for involving us in the Middle East drama. We have enough to deal with – from Nkandla to petrol running low and the Rand plummeting faster than most Hollywood celebrities’ morals.
Ever watched the movie American Sniper? The viewer is constantly confronted with images of American soldiers who, in fear and trepidation, navigate their way through an Afghanistan town, alert to the probability of being shot in the head or have a bomb thrown at them.
We might not live in a war-torn country, but I have the feeling that we South Africans are like those poor soldiers — we navigate our towns, paranoid, cautious and nervous.
You never know when all hell and doom will finally descend on us like a sniper taking a shot at a dust covered soldier.
May the world, therefore, take note: our nerves are already shot as we walk a tight-rope of survival in our jungle of violence, so why not just throw potential terrorist threats into the mix?
To all terrorists or criminals, here is a simple plea: just don’t do anything funny or weird during the Rugby World Cup, and please, leave Eskom alone during this time of barbaric tackles and grunts.
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