SOWETAN SAYS | Let's rise against mass killings

A politician is fighting for his life after he was shot multiple times in Schoemansdal. Stock image.
A politician is fighting for his life after he was shot multiple times in Schoemansdal. Stock image.
Image: 123RF/RUSLANPHOTO2

We have been left shaken once again by another mass shooting, a third such violent attack on human life, in as many weeks.

The latest horror killing of seven people happened in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, on Sunday morning where a tavern owner shot dead five family members and two neighbours before turning the gun on himself.

According to police, the source of the massacre of those people, including a three-year-old boy, was an altercation between a tavern owner and a relative of the deceased who were celebrating lobola negotiations in Mokokotlong informal settlement. Four people survived the shooting, including a one-year-old who was taken to hospital with injuries.

The incident came a week after another heartbreaking shooting of six patrollers in Godini, Qumbu in the Eastern Cape, by unknown assailants. Four people who survived the attack were taken to hospital.  The Qumbu shooting was preceded by the Lusikisiki massacre which claimed the lives of 18 people. We applaud the police for making arrest in this case.

Even for a nation that is beginning to normalise violent crime with a murder rate that is one of the highest in the world, three mass shootings in three weeks ought to raise an alarm. How can we allow this to happen and continue to carry on with our lives as though things are normal?

The answer to this question and the problem can no longer lie with law enforcement alone because we have been here far too many times. If the quarterly police crime reports are anything to go by, the war against violent crime is far from being won. This is not a problem police and laws alone can fix.

We must look at one another, our communities, neighbours and inside our homes if we are to understand fully what drives people to go on a killing spree so mercilessly as we have witnessed recently.

Of course, there are systemic and structural problems in our criminal justice system that need fixing, such as parole in some instances, to keep murderers off our streets.

But what is evidently clear from these recent killings, even if the motive behind some cases is yet to be established, is that we can no longer afford to sit idle as violence destroys our communities.

SowetanLIVE


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