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What a cold people we've become

Image: STOCK

The level of lawlessness in South Africa has gone too far and hardly a day passes by without distressing news about violence and crime that is gripping the country.

It is how SA has become and news of gender-based violence, political killings, cash-in-transit heists, among other violent crimes, no longer come as total shock to most of the people.

Such have become habitual crime news, and the vicious killing of a car guard who was beaten to death in public in Johannesburg CBD is one such story.

The brutal killing will be treated like any other killing in SA in some quarters, thanks to the appalling state of lawlessness in our country.

The car guard was killed after he was subjected to an hour of assault, allegedly by a motorist who acted like a raging bull, according to a witness.

He was killed just two days after he started working on the streets to assist with parking cars. He died trying to eke out a living.

His death was as a result of being suspected of theft out of the alleged killer's car.

The car guard did not deserve to die like that. The honourable thing the said motorist should have done was to hand him over to police.

Unfortunately, no one was there to intervene as people now seem to be accustomed to assault incidents and, to an extent, appear like they enjoy watching the proceedings.

Bystanders seem to prefer to record such incidents with their smartphones so that they can post the videos on social media.

At For Hare University, people watched as a female student was brutally assaulted by a male student. Without putting themselves at risk by intervening, we urge bystanders to rather put their smartphones to good use by calling the police. We believe that had the spectators called the authorities, the female student would have been spared further assault. But instead the spectators, who were fellow students, preferred to capture the ugly incident on their phones.

A video of the assault has since gone viral. The level of crime and violence has reached levels of spectator sport, with people watching assaults live or on social media.

Let's join hands to end this culture of violence in our society. We have overcome the worst in the past.

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