OPINION | Crime has heightened to the point that someone like Mokae couldn't be spared of brutal murder

The brutal murder last week of Gomolemo Mokae in his home in GaRankuwa township has left me traumatised. I knew him well as a fellow Black Consciousness activist and writer.

It is the senselessness of it all that, for me, compounds the horror of how Mokae met his death. A medical doctor by training, even if he was no longer practising after suffering a stroke a few years ago, he had lived in GaRankuwa all his professional life, resisting the exodus to the previously whites-only suburbs.

In GaRankuwa, Mokae treated the indigent sick and infirm for no payment. It was here that he felt safe with his people, until last week when he was shot several times and left to bleed to death in his home. 

He was to remain like that for several days until neighbours alerted his elder brother, Johnny, on Wednesday March 5, to the stench from the house. When Johnny arrived, he was greeted by the gory scene of a decomposing body, lying in what had been pools of blood, some of which splattered on the walls.

And with that discovery, Mokae’s end was confirmed. He had last been seen on Saturday March 1, implying the murder may have happened that night. I have walked Johnny’s path myself, the path of agony of walking into a scene of utter horror involving the death of a close relative. This was when my son was accosted while driving in December 2006, assaulted, bundled into the boot of his car and burnt alive.

We needed DNA tests to identify him because his body was burnt to a cinder. In that situation, you go through the initial shock at the sight, then the anger that someone innocent has been murdered in the most brutal way. Then, the mental attempt to see whether anything could have been done to prevent the evil deed. This results in a loop of blame and self-blame that maybe you somehow could have stopped this.

It is a cycle of self-interrogation that never ends. The Mokaes are in that space, and it is harrowing. It is being taken back to that space that has traumatised me because if truth be told, you never heal from such an experience.

Mokae was home. He was not walking in some dark, dangerous part of GaRankuwa late at night looking for trouble. And for me, it all boils down to this question: If Mokae – the doctor of the poor of GaRankuwa, the poet, writer, political activist of serious note – cannot be safe in his own house, in his township, who is?

If Mokae can be killed in this brutal way in GaRankuwa, and I am emphasising GaRankuwa, who can be safe in that township? No one should ever be killed, let alone in the manner that Mokae was murdered, but Mokae was not anyone in that township.

He was the son who made it and who didn’t go away. He lived with the people as one of them. He gave for nothing in return, because as a Black Consciousness adherent, he lived the dictum of Steve Biko that those who internalise its political philosophy must give the world a more humane face.

The sense of belonging that Mokae enjoyed, however, was not enough to stop the murder most foul. Mokae was killed because, as a country, we have become a lawless and heartless place where criminals believe they can get away with their crimes. People die for cellphones, a 32cm TV or even a social grant card.

There is scant respect for human life, for the law, for people’s property and the public space. I dabble in some farming activity up in Limpopo. Our fences are cut by marauding criminals almost every week and snares are placed to catch our animals. One of my neighbours had an electric fence, but this did not stop his farm from being attacked more than five times in two years.

The rapes of nurses in a clinic outside Polokwane, the brazen reopening of buildings sealed off by the Joburg municipality, or the attempted theft of big transformers in Tshwane by municipality employees, are just some examples of how morality and law and order have broken down.

The killers who took Mokae’s life did not care who he was. Whatever drove them to do it remains a mystery.

But there is a silver lining in this otherwise bleak situation. As soon as word spread that Mokae had been killed, the community, his community, descended on his house. They cleaned and fumigated it and cleared the yard of all debris.

The killers took Gomolemo’s life, but they failed to take the spirit he engendered in that community; the spirit of ubuntu, of oneness, of solidarity and caring. It is the lasting testament to who Gomolemo, the Tower, was.