Stopping the carnage starts with you and me

TAEGRIN Morris, was brutally killed on 19 July 2014. Social media was abuzz with the news and media organisations around the country was carrying the child’s death as their top story.

What’s more, thousands, including dignitaries showed up to pay their respect for the four-year-old on Saturday who was killed when hijackers dragged him alongside his parent’s car in Reiger Park.

His killing left me feeling helpless as did the brutal murder of Anene Booysens, the Bredasdorp teenager who was gang-raped and then disemboweled in February last year.

Her abdomen had been slit open at a construction site in the Western Cape. And while her killer Johannes Kana was given two life sentences for the horrific crime, I am saddened that we have to hear and report on stories like that of Teagrin.

The Citizen newspaper reported that Gauteng Premier, David Makhura uttered the phrase “enough is enough” several times during his address at Taegrin’s funeral on Saturday. Throughout the week I received countless broadcast messages on social media calling on me to pass on the message about Taegrin’s killing.

But it left me thinking: I pass it on and then what? What does passing on a message do? What impact can we have in this country to arrest these attacks? The solution, is not as simple as many make it out to be and neither is it government’s problem alone. And as cliched as it might sound, ‘it starts with you and me’.