Rampant crime: South Africa must find its anger switch

The story about a frog immediately jumping out when it is put into a pot of boiling water aptly describes the way South Africa has fully embraced and accepted its crime situation.

It is said that if a frog is put into a pot of lukewarm water it stays in even when the water temperature is gradually taken up, until it boils to death.

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Apparently, it adjusts to the rising water temperature, past the point where the temperature is hot enough to kill it.

When the news of the murder of 24-year-old Kaizer Chiefs defender Luke Fleurs broke, there was immediate outrage on the broadcasting airwaves and social media. For a good 24 hours.

Life carries on

And then life carried on. Even his team, Kaizer Chiefs, honoured their Saturday fixture against Chippa United, just three days after his death. Playing “in his honour”, they said.

No, Kaizer Chiefs are not cold-hearted and uncaring. They are just South African. Like the frog adjusting to boiling water, South Africa has fully adapted to its abnormally high levels of crime.

There should be more than just a 24-hour pause when the royalty of South Africa’s football loses a player to murder. This is the Real Madrid or Manchester United of South Africa.

But the anger levels are so low life just goes on. Earlier in the week, there were muted celebrations when police mowed down a group of nine alleged criminals in Marianhill, KwaZulu-Natal.

Add another six shot dead in Mpumalanga and that gives a picture of a desperate police force, no longer able to hide its failure to arrest criminals and now resorting to the “shoot to kill” tactics that are the preferred methods of Police Minister Bheki Cele.

There would be another muted celebration if the suspected murderers of Fleurs died in a hail of police bullets. “Good riddance,” the country would sigh. But that would be missing the point. Desperate policing should never be celebrated.

It is only a matter of time before the police start mowing down innocent people and those celebrating their tactics now cry about being victims of police brutality.

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All because crime got so bad and citizens became used to living with unnatural responses to crime. One social media commentator responded to the death of Fleurs with the refrain that is always on top of South Africans’ responses to murder:

“Why did they have to shoot him? Why couldn’t they just take the car and let him live?” Sigh!

The frog is so used to the boiling water by now that it is okay to say to the criminals: “We are okay with you committing the lesser crime of taking our possessions by force, just as long as you let us live.”

That is how pathetic this country’s response is to a crime situation that is on the same level as a war situation.

Not even the Gaza strip experiences 27 000 murders a year unless war has broken out, as it has now.

South Africa must find its anger switch and dial it up. Not in an uncontrolled way of willing police to kill all suspected criminals, but in a way that shows that citizens want their pride back.

The pride that comes from living in a country that not only reflects the right to life in the constitution, but a pride that says politicians who stood by when the criminals took over must be voted out.

Fleurs and the country deserve better.