We need to fight crime together

THE vicious abduction and murder of a beautiful young schoolteacher while waiting to get a routine, early-morning lift to work is a crime which has rocked a city.

But while there is the understandable anger and sorrow, there is also that cancerous by-product of our distressingly crime-riddled society: pervasive prejudice.

In the days immediately following Jayde Panayiotou’s killing, a social media war erupted which reached a frenzy with calls for the return of the death penalty and a catalogue of racial intolerance – if not blatantly bigoted accusations – in attempts to profile those responsible.

But suddenly, overnight, the picture changed.

Fears of a faceless killer or killers roaming the streets of Nelson Mandela Bay appeared to evaporate with the arrest of the victim’s seemingly devoted husband for allegedly hiring men to carry out the hit.

That the news that someone who should have been the most trusted individual in Jayde’s life was possibly the man who planned her death should elicit some measure of relief is the greatest irony and tragedy of what remains South Africa’s stubbornly strained racial landscape at many levels.

The ensuing backlash was now against those who had made assumptions based on their deep-rooted prejudices.

Predilections with race and crime remain crippling fuel in an already electrically charged psyche of the city – and the country as a whole.

Do we now feel safer in our homes or on the streets because one of Jayde’s accused killers is her husband?

Of course not. The fact that there are people willing to kill for cash – no matter what the motivation or who the architect of the crime is – should not for a moment persuade us that we are not a crime capital.

If we want to do something concrete, it should certainly not be baseless, petty fingerpointing when acts like these are committed.

A powerful, united front against the scourge of violence and criminal elements among us should be our priority and where every possible resource is focused.

It is the only hope we have of turning the tide.