Political hits: KZN battle must come to an end

To what end will KwaZulu-Natal continue as a trigger-happy province?

While every province remains a dangerous place to be, there is something frighteningly different about KZN.

Its reputation of lives lost, hitmen and grieving widows seem to be the order of the day.

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Every police minister and the security cluster promising to sweep through the death and bloodbaths, but without fail, KZN seems to be the province of death.

Until when? Its residents proudly call it the land of the brave, because living to see another day is a feat.

In Gauteng, it is the norm that places that are dominated by migrants from KZN are seen as dangerous and no-go areas.

The shake-up under KZN police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi restored faith outside of the province, while the people of KZN lament that they live another day under a hail of bullets and gunfire.

The truth is that none of that is normal. As loud as our voices are, so should our sense of community in weeding out the gun-totting that has such a suffocating grip in these communities.

Though I reside far from these areas affected by these social ills, by means of second-hand information, I always know something.

I cannot live in isolation and believe that the spillover of that lawlessness will not reach me.

We need to find our voice in order to destabilise the voices that have ruled these communities with their crimes. In their way, they teach children that live in these communities to either fear or to continue to perpetuate this violence.

While the raging gunfire continues, very little has been done to stabilise the communities that are ruled alongside men and women in blue who are meant to serve and protect.

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Something must give. We know the criminals within our communities. We also know the police who harbour these criminals and turn a blind eye.

We know the political figures whose career ambitions are being bankrolled by this blood money – the point is, we know, yet we turn and look away.

We remain silent and allow the safety and pleasure of our community to be taken away.

We allow ourselves to bear witness to mortuary vans becoming an ever-constant sight for us – that the children we raise become so desensitised to the bloodshed and mayhem, because this is normal.

KZN needs to go into the history books, for more than the bloodshed that has plagued it for all these years.

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