Oh, how the memes have flowed from the sight of 50-odd sharply dressed refugees and their chattel calmly boarding a flight to the Home of the Brave. No leaky boats for them, no drowning in the Mediterranean, no crowded migrant camps in Calais where hope goes to die.
Next up: Donald Trump ambushing another head of state in the Oval Office, doing something he excels at — playing a president on TV.
The ambush has put both the Lucky Country and President Cyril Ramaphosa back on the front page — for five minutes anyway. Dare we hope those deeply unpleasant moments in Washington might translate into action at home?
Dare we hope those deeply unpleasant moments in Washington DC might translate into action at home?
Because this is the reality of South Africa. The 2023 global organised crime index gives us a criminality score of 7.18, the seventh-worst out of 193 countries — and No 3 in Africa. Number. Three.
In the 2023/2024 financial year, AfriForum recorded 49 farm murders. As a report by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) notes, that’s 0.2% of the 27,621 murders recorded nationally.
Meanwhile, the police’s ability to detect murder has dropped by 65% since 2012, and now stands at 11%, says the ISS. The national conviction rate for murder? Just 13%.
Years ago, a press photographer took a picture of police watching over a street demonstration. One cop, obviously feeling the situation was under control and wanting to sit down, had deployed his pump-action shotgun as a shooting stick — stock on the ground and the business end wedged firmly between his butt cheeks. Back then, the eye-watering image didn’t feel like a metaphor for the state of the police, but it does now.
Mr President, fix it already — before that stock slips and we all get blown away.
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