The killing by stoning of a security guard by striking workers at a Clover factory in Olifantsfontein, Gauteng, is heartbreaking. The deceased was a human being, and the savagery he was subjected to bodes ill for our nation. I shudder to think what will happen when law and order ceases to exist.

We are a nation on the edges of a steep cliff, staring into the abyss below. The innocent guard was a brother, father, son, uncle and husband to someone. It is extremely sad that it took the tragic death of an innocent soul to massively jolt the conscious of the entire country.

His gruesome killing has become a  symbol of how cheap African blood has become today. We are ready to bludgeon to death anyone who disagrees with our views. Sooner or later, what we all fought for to attain liberty, equality and prosperity, will be burnt into cinders by the mobs disdain values of sacred human life.

The country and it’s law enforcement machinery have been on auto-pilot amid this human crisis brought by criminality. They remain deaf to the cries and agony of all our people. The death of one security guard means nothing to them; just a mere statistic. As a fractured and imbalanced society, we have acquired an immunity to painful tragedies. We sadly have reached the point where we cannot gauge danger anymore.

Over 50 people are murdered every day in SA as we grimly look on. We have become detached from death and destruction, because we think it does not affect us when it happens to other people. That mentality is misplaced; any harm to other members of our society plunges our nation towards annihilation.

Unless and until we expunge violence from our behaviour and inflammatory language from our discourse, we will as a nation be heading into the bowels of absolute tyranny.

Farouk Araie, Benoni