The tragedy of 15 people being swept away by rapidly rising river water has become one of those tragedies we might as well expect at least once a year, like accepting the inevitability of some boys dying at initiation schools in the Eastern Cape.

Some of the most repeated remarks such as in the aftermath of the tragic drowning of individuals partaking in a cleansing ritual in the Jukskei River in Johannesburg have been of disbelief in people’s gullibility...