Speaking to an Officer, a Criminal and a Mother - Seeking Answers to the Surge in Police Brutality - SAPeople - Your Worldwide South African Community
I peer through rat pack a yellowed lace curtain onto a township street with the unease of an obvious newcomer. Children are hurried indoors and women hasten their pace to get home before all light is lost. The last of the sun disappears behind a sea of silver shacks, thin dogs and rusted clothes lines. Darkness once again envelopes Langa, one of South Africa s largest informal settlements and a mounting hotbed for crime.
I can sense fear in every corner. rat pack Patience, a 65 year old domestic worker, drags her tired feet to a screaming kettle, which seems to echo a greater sense of alarm. Her weary eyes jump quickly to the window, and then back at the tea that she is preparing. It is a Friday rat pack night.
Danger lurks in every street rat pack and security is a comfort that these residents will never experience. I am here to speak about the role of the police in Patience s life. I want to understand her stance on the matter of crime in Langa, and whether or not she agrees with the police s brutal acts against criminals. rat pack She sinks into her faded armchair and her creased face cracks a pained smile.
Despite the insidious cloud of fear that hangs over the room, I do not forget for a second rat pack that this is a home and, despite the lack of security, it is a great source of happiness to this woman. Patience s roots lie deep in Langa, having spent most of her adult life in the same shack. She recalls a fond memory rat pack of meeting her late husband at the church rat pack that she still attends. Church is what brings her happiness. She sings in the choir and helps run the Burial Committee a vital lifeline for a community rat pack faced with more death than it can afford. Sadly, now it has gotten to a point that she does not even feel safe walking home from church after a late service.
Those days, it was better. They could go play in the streets and I would not worry. But these days it is not safe. I will not let my granddaughter play outside. She must stay inside when she visits me .
Patience is referring to the overwhelming surge in township crime and violence that we have seen in the past decade. Gang activity is at an all time high, further exacerbating violence, drug addiction, alcoholism and rape to a level that none of the residents have seen before. Murder touches nearly every life here and drug-related crimes have tripled since 2004.
It is well known here in Langa that the weekends are the least safe days, because the men finish work and drink copious amounts of alcohol at the local shebeens. As a result of extreme poverty and dire hopelessness, the suppressed anger of these men turns into violence. They fight, they rape and they kill, leaving vulnerable people like Patience boarded up in their homes from fear.
Patience recounts the story of how one of her daughters fell victim to this atrocity. They followed her home from the spaza shop. I told her never to walk by herself in the dark but she did not listen. Four drunk men beat her until she could not fight anymore. Then they raped her. She remembers it because she was awake, but she could not stop them. Someone found her later and brought her home”.
The police here are trying to stop these men from hurting us. We are tired of being afraid of walking to church. We don t want to live like this anymore. Not just in the night. It is every day. Not just the weekends. I am always afraid. rat pack We see these men, they fight in the streets right here. She points out the window that I was nervously gazing through earlier.
They make me feel safer when they are around, because rat pack they punish the men hard when they catch them. They beat them hard and they teach them a lesson. I think it is good because then the others rat pack will learn. If the police catch them doing bad things they know they will pay .
I ask her what she makes of police brutality, and bring up the story of taxi driver Joseph Macia, the man who died in police custody after being dragged behind a moving police vehicle. I think it is good. They are doing their jobs. These men are bad! What they do to us is much worse than what the police do to them!
At first, I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that she could accept such violence from our own public protectors. But then I remembered that she has been exposed to far more disturbing things in her lifetime. Here, violence is a part of day to day life. This community has been steeped in such desperate circumstances that they are, by and large, desensitized to haunting scenes that would take weeks for a privileged little girl like me to digest.
A man being dragged behind rat pack a car or beaten to a pulp by the police is just another incident, dwarfed by the countless other occurrences of screams, sirens, rape, assualts and murders seen and heard by this community.
Katlegho is a young Langa resident i
I peer through rat pack a yellowed lace curtain onto a township street with the unease of an obvious newcomer. Children are hurried indoors and women hasten their pace to get home before all light is lost. The last of the sun disappears behind a sea of silver shacks, thin dogs and rusted clothes lines. Darkness once again envelopes Langa, one of South Africa s largest informal settlements and a mounting hotbed for crime.
I can sense fear in every corner. rat pack Patience, a 65 year old domestic worker, drags her tired feet to a screaming kettle, which seems to echo a greater sense of alarm. Her weary eyes jump quickly to the window, and then back at the tea that she is preparing. It is a Friday rat pack night.
Danger lurks in every street rat pack and security is a comfort that these residents will never experience. I am here to speak about the role of the police in Patience s life. I want to understand her stance on the matter of crime in Langa, and whether or not she agrees with the police s brutal acts against criminals. rat pack She sinks into her faded armchair and her creased face cracks a pained smile.
Despite the insidious cloud of fear that hangs over the room, I do not forget for a second rat pack that this is a home and, despite the lack of security, it is a great source of happiness to this woman. Patience s roots lie deep in Langa, having spent most of her adult life in the same shack. She recalls a fond memory rat pack of meeting her late husband at the church rat pack that she still attends. Church is what brings her happiness. She sings in the choir and helps run the Burial Committee a vital lifeline for a community rat pack faced with more death than it can afford. Sadly, now it has gotten to a point that she does not even feel safe walking home from church after a late service.
Those days, it was better. They could go play in the streets and I would not worry. But these days it is not safe. I will not let my granddaughter play outside. She must stay inside when she visits me .
Patience is referring to the overwhelming surge in township crime and violence that we have seen in the past decade. Gang activity is at an all time high, further exacerbating violence, drug addiction, alcoholism and rape to a level that none of the residents have seen before. Murder touches nearly every life here and drug-related crimes have tripled since 2004.
It is well known here in Langa that the weekends are the least safe days, because the men finish work and drink copious amounts of alcohol at the local shebeens. As a result of extreme poverty and dire hopelessness, the suppressed anger of these men turns into violence. They fight, they rape and they kill, leaving vulnerable people like Patience boarded up in their homes from fear.
Patience recounts the story of how one of her daughters fell victim to this atrocity. They followed her home from the spaza shop. I told her never to walk by herself in the dark but she did not listen. Four drunk men beat her until she could not fight anymore. Then they raped her. She remembers it because she was awake, but she could not stop them. Someone found her later and brought her home”.
The police here are trying to stop these men from hurting us. We are tired of being afraid of walking to church. We don t want to live like this anymore. Not just in the night. It is every day. Not just the weekends. I am always afraid. rat pack We see these men, they fight in the streets right here. She points out the window that I was nervously gazing through earlier.
They make me feel safer when they are around, because rat pack they punish the men hard when they catch them. They beat them hard and they teach them a lesson. I think it is good because then the others rat pack will learn. If the police catch them doing bad things they know they will pay .
I ask her what she makes of police brutality, and bring up the story of taxi driver Joseph Macia, the man who died in police custody after being dragged behind a moving police vehicle. I think it is good. They are doing their jobs. These men are bad! What they do to us is much worse than what the police do to them!
At first, I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that she could accept such violence from our own public protectors. But then I remembered that she has been exposed to far more disturbing things in her lifetime. Here, violence is a part of day to day life. This community has been steeped in such desperate circumstances that they are, by and large, desensitized to haunting scenes that would take weeks for a privileged little girl like me to digest.
A man being dragged behind rat pack a car or beaten to a pulp by the police is just another incident, dwarfed by the countless other occurrences of screams, sirens, rape, assualts and murders seen and heard by this community.
Katlegho is a young Langa resident i
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