Abuse in all its forms on the rise

If it is true that the incident in Katlehong was fuelled by the ongoing vendetta between warring taxi factions in the area, then it is also true that our townships are being remodelled on the Cape Flats with its gang violence. Such an incident remains an indictment on our crime surveillance, detection, control system and mechanisms.

As a community newspaper, our hearts bleed and our eyes are filled with the same tears as Rethabile’s family. And as parents, we too ask ourselves the same question her bereaved family have been asking their tortured hearts since her death: “Why our child?”

There is no doubt in the minds of every law-abiding citizen that the crime levels in our townships have become overwhelmingly unacceptable and our police are overburdened.

And when these same law enforcement agents find themselves on the retreat and get themselves entangled in the same web of crime and violence as the criminals they are supposed to be fighting, does that then mean Gauteng may also soon find itself being policed by the army to protect its citizens, as is the case in the Cape Flats?

The rising crime wave is a serious threat not only to the overwhelming majority of law-abiding members of our respective communities, but also to the image of the police in the public’s eye.

The result of this state of affairs is acts of desperation that translate into mob justice by communities who have lost their trust in and patience with the police.

It looks like it will take more than just the police jacking up their failing image in the eyes of the public and the state deploying the army into townships to quell and finally eradicate the spiralling crime and violence. Our morality as a society will have to change, too.

We hope and pray that they will act swiftly in tracing and arresting the person or people involved in the killing of this innocent child.

We send our condolences to the Rapuleng family on the loss of their beloved daughter.

May her soul rest in peace.

A generation of elderly men, and some women, is being subjected to the worst form of human abuse by their own children, nephews, nieces and sometimes even grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they suffer silently with no one to turn to.

Many of them are sickly and too old and frail to do anything for themselves. They have become victims of numerous forms of abuse, including the theft of their pension grant by their own offspring and family members, who often treat them worse than homeless beggars and lepers in their own homes.

Too ashamed and humiliated to be publicly identified, many of them refused to have their names publicised as they openly shared their hermit-like existence. At the funeral of one such pensioner, neighbours ascribed his death to “sheer neglect” by his own children.

Neighbours who knew the once self-respecting and confident man in his younger days described his death as a “relief” after what he had been subjected to. Although he was diabetic and suffered from other illnesses related to old age, he was only allowed into the house in the evenings and was forced to spend the days sitting in the sun or under the shade outside.

At a time in their lives when a large percentage of their peers are cared for by loving family members in the comfort of their family homes and surrounded by loving children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many ageing fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers have been discarded and thrown out of the very family homes they built.

The manner in which our elderly are treated is indeed a sad state of affairs.