The collateral damage of these brutal crimes

Nosicelo Mtembeni was killed and her family will never be the same again.

The idea of her body being dismembered and her lifeless remains placed in a suitcase sends chills down my spine.

I pen this as a mother on both ends of this atrocity. On one end, a mother who must be presented the remains of her dismembered child. On the other, a mother who must watch as her child accused of murder goes through the court system.

A young man’s free life will cease to exist. Everything that a family has sacrificed for his upbringing will mean nothing.

They invested with the hopes of raising a child in a way that would be pleasing not only in the eyes of the parents, but of society in general.

Today, a nation bays for that same young man’s blood. While we will question the kind of home that he comes from, none of us wants to admit that children do sometime stray.

They are moulded from the experiences of the society they are exposed to and live in they are the products of the world in which they are expected to survive and thrive.

By association, his family has had its own moral compass shaken because its core values have been brought into question in a way so public it will never be forgotten.

And on the other end, a mother sits with a candle in the room, sharing it with mourners singing hymns as the only way to express their shared compassion.

Again, this is a mother who invested so much. A mother who reared a baby girl, educated her and whispered to her in her sleep that the world was her oyster and every dream of hers was attainable.

We fume about how she met her end, but the mother in me cannot help but share in the pain of the mothers who are now at a crossroads because of the acts of a child that have brought them to a painful meeting point.

May we not forget the parents who need counselling the heinous acts of their children because they, too, have left behind scarred mothers and fathers who are collateral damage.