The seeds of anarchy
NEWS that congregants had, over the weekend, attacked a Johannesburg Metro Police officer and stolen his firearm speaks to growing levels of lawlessness and indifference to authority in South Africa.
Not that their reasons can ever be good enough, but the congregants were unhappy the officers were towing away one of their cars which was parked in the road, causing traffic congestion.
Last week, an 8-year-old boy died in Cape Town after the thugs ambushed an ambulance he was being transported in. The thugs robbed the crew. The child was certified dead when he eventually arrived at hospital.
Last month, a group of Nigerians attacked cops during a drug raid in Vanderbijlpark, on the Vaal.
These are few of the many cases that we hear about. Many of us would have heard of how agents tasked with fitting prepaid electricity meters have been chased out of communities.
It might not be a crisis today, but the seeds are being carefully sown.
It should be unnerving to all who would like to see a state ruled on law and order rather than a country pieced out to local strongmen who control their jurisdiction as if it were a Middle-Ages fiefdom.
It cannot be business as usual when criminals in South Africa think nothing of taking a dismissive attitude towards law enforcement agents and other state officials performing their jobs.
We do not advocate the high-handedness of the apartheid regime. We certainly do not want to be understood to be hankering for the days when the jackboot was the only logic and tool in addressing what the authorities saw as a decline in good public morals.
We refuse to accept that the opposite of treating citizens (and non-citizens) as if they are enemies of the state is to treat criminals with kid-gloves. The state needs to assert its authority soonest. The day it starts depending on individuals, whether or not they will abide by the authority given to law enforcement agencies in protecting the common good, is the day that we might as well open the gates for the barbarians to walk in.