South Africa is in crisis: who can help and how, one wonders?
For a country that is the quintessential home to arguably, the greatest revolutionary the world has known, things aren’t looking that good for Madiba’s South Africa.
In fact, where the current situation stands then, South Africa is experiencing the worst law and order situation in the longest possible time. What would be your opinion if you got to know that as on date, as many as 57 murders take place on an average basis, per day?
Some might call this developing shocking. To the others, who aren’t that privy to just what is going on, this might seem like a rude shock of a rare kind. One honestly runs out of words to explain the civilian disarray that one’s getting to experience in a nation that successfully defeated Apartheid in the past.
Surely, this doesn’t read like the most encouraging news to have emanated from the land revered often as the ‘Protea fire.’ Isn’t it? But that is the truth, whether one likes it or not. South Africa in crisis is for real, and it can no longer be sidelined.
How else can one possibly explain just what is on the stake right there in the Protean land?
Trying to unfold the deeper crisis that’s at the core, the civilians, shockingly, at a pan-South Africa level feel that the situation is worse enough for it to be dubbed as a ‘war-zone’ out there.
Believe it or not, the police minister of South Africa is himself shocked by the rising state of crime (inner-city) and the unremitting sort of chaos that has taken place. Leading English media outlet, Daily Mail shared the following in lines with the burning issue:
More than 20,300 people – some 57 every day – have been killed across the country in just 12 months, official statistics showed Tuesday.
Can you dig that?
To understand a bit as to what’s led to this chaotic situation, it is being reported that on account of the rising situation of gang violence in the Western Cape Province, the situation has turned into a literal hell hole of sorts.
To elaborate further, it appears that the issue of rising crime isn’t actually a new development. Circa 2016-onward, things haven’t been all that well where the overall law and order situation of the great African nation is concerned.
Some startling numbers revealed the real extent of the damage inflicted by crime in exacerbating the woes of the land from which political elites like Zuma have emerged.
A total of 20,336 people were killed between April 2017 and the end of March 2018, up from 19,016 the previous year.
The numbers reflect a 6.9 per cent year-on-year increase, one of the highest per capita since the end of apartheid 24 years ago.
If these numbers aren’t surprising and saddening, then one wonders, just what might ever suffice?
When approached by some of the leading media outlets, then the Police Minister, Mr Bheki Cele said the following:
‘Fifty-seven a day, that’s how South Africans are murdered. It borders close to the war zone while there is a peace, there is no war in South Africa.’
But that told, for a country whose economy has been constantly prospering with there being a lot of increase in the Chinese investment in diverse spheres, including platinum mines and the ever flourishing diamond industry, one wonders, just how can things get better and if not any time soon, then, by when?
There’s a lot of faith amid the hearts of the locals who feel that fellow South Africans should not fear or worry and try not to get bogged down by the incidents of increasing crimes as evident at the moment.