The gang rape of eight women in Krugersdorp on Thursday evening is yet another reminder that ours is a country under siege from brazen criminals hell-bent on destroying every bit of our nationhood.
The group were part of a crew shooting a music video on a mine dump in West Village.
The incident has shocked the nation and prompted widespread condemnation from different quarters of society including President Cyril Ramaphosa.
However, we must be mindful that this incident is not isolated.
It is a symptom of entrenched criminality which is becoming increasingly violent and sadistic in that community and many others in our country.
In the same neighbourhood just three weeks ago, a group of men dragged two women them from their homes and raped them in an open field nearby.
Residents live in constant fear, which is worsened by an unresponsive and weakened police system.
Wearing blankets and balaclavas, the perpetrators are believed to be a group of foreign nationals from Lesotho.
The 80 men who were arrested after last week’s incident are to be charged with immigration and illegal mining crimes but they are yet to be connected to the rapes.
The arrests, while welcome, indicate a largely reactive policing system that is consistently on the back foot and unable to strategically push back against emerging groupings terrorising our communities.
It is inconceivable that despite the situation we are in as a country, our government has not declared crime a national crisis, deserving of a much more urgent, co-ordinated and deliberate intervention to systemically break the back of the these syndicates.
In each community where there are periodic flare-ups in violent crime, the experience of residents is the same – none have confidence in the local police because they are either unable or unwilling to respond effectively.
We can no longer continue to have innocent people slaughtered daily and the only response we see are politicians who show up to calm tensions and temporarily deploy more boots on the ground before they are called to another hotspot to do the same.
We need an overhaul of our policing system that will strengthen their operations at station level to be far more agile and connected to the communities they serve.
We need a competent leadership at provincial and national levels that will implement an effective national crime prevention strategy.
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