kagablog

It’s an expensive business, getting mugged. Especially when you are stabbed, because for that you have to see a doctor or go to hospital, get stitches and pain-killers and antibiotics and anti-inflammatory pills.

But I have the means to finance all this, as well as being able to replace my stolen carkeys, shoes and various other small things like watches and bits of jewelry. Perhaps this is why I was treated the way I was, when these items were forcibly taken from my person, during the mugging of my girlfriend and I on Melville Koppies, central Joburg, by two so-called blacks, one of whom was wielding a pump-action shotgun.

I was clobbered with said gun on the back of the neck and punched and stabbed with my own penknife, although I handed over the above goods without argument – I just didn’t want to lie down on the ground in front of these two. So I was basically bludgeoned to the ground.

Much harder to replace than the material items is the hurt pride and the sense of optimism for Africa and South Africa which, as I have been robbed several times in the last few years, is becoming rather difficult to maintain.

And it’s really hard to believe that the cops care when you go report yet another crime to your person and goods and you are told that you shouldn’t be out walking in the open in the first place. The insinuation is that it’s your fault. If you would only stay in your home, or rather walk around a mall, then you will be safe, they insisted. But I don’t believe that either, having suffered several attempted break-ins at my own residence of late.

I was also told by the cops that I was “lucky” to have got away with relatively minor injuries. I guess it was my lucky day. It could have turned out much worse. They could have attacked my girlfriend, in which case, they would have had to kill me, or I them. I am truly thankful.
What is going on here, as part of the low-level war previously mentioned on the kagablog, is actually a turf war. I live on the ‘fringe,’ which is why I am getting hit. I like to walk in nature. I live next to a river. The underlying rule is becoming: live in a secure complex, not a house by the river, and don’t walk in unpatrolled areas.

The two men who have conducted their reign of terror on the koppies have become the rulers of this territory by default. It’s just too dangerous to walk there, and the cops can’t or won’t catch them, so it’s now their turf.

So far this pair have assaulted and robbed about 60 victims, and still nothing has been done. They bury the gun after hitting people with it and disappear until the heat dies down. Then they return, dig it up and wait for the next suckers.

There is a contingent of reservists who are determined to nail these guys. I was phoned by them soon after my ordeal and went to look at some identity photographs. Some of the people photographed were in the process of being fucked up, so they didn’t look too good. Others were just photographed because they looked suspicious, which isn’t exactly legal, but then again, this guy explained, a lot of what they do isn’t legal. The hands of the cops are tied, he said, but ours are not.

I’m not sure who is more nuts, the muggers or the reservists, who now send me sms messages about the ambushes they are setting.
Well, the break-ins at my house only stopped when the local community policing forum became involved. So this is what it’s boiled down to: vigilante groups, who are standing up to the thugs, because the cops won’t. Are they racists? Do they get a thrill out of beating possible thugs, or are they just trying to protect the community? I don’t know. At least these guys are trying to do something about the situation.
Perhaps I must accept the fact that I am likely to be an ongoing victim of crime, and violent crime at that, simply because for 500 years my white ancestors oppressed and robbed the black residents of this country. If I am going to stay here, I must be prepared to be a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. Perhaps I am already giving way to despair and resignation, as Ian Martin wrote …

Funny thing is, I felt no rage at the time. I felt absolutely no pain – that only came later, when the adrenalin wore off. It was more like, oh, here we go again. So I’m becoming used to being robbed. Does this mean I am becoming a victim?

I did notice as I drove the streets afterwards, that I was looking for my assailants. But I don’t know that if I see them, I will leap from my car with whatever weapon I can find and do serious bodily harm. My anger has been delayed, which is dangerous, but I know that to exact revenge won’t bring real satisfaction; it will just lower me to the level of my muggers.

It’s a complex thing to be the victim of what was at least in part a racial attack. I am a white heterosexual male, so I haven’t been the object of violence that women, so-called blacks or gays often are or were. On the other hand, I only weigh 60kg and I’m not nearly six foot tall and I am approaching 50 pretty fast. I have been fucked up many, many times, and there wasn’t much I could do in retaliation.

It’s actually quite laughable (if it wasn’t also tragic) how literal a racist/sexist attack, or any attack motivated by prejudice is. Being told to get on your knees, so that that the attacker feels taller and therefore superior. Your ancestors did this to mine, now the roles are reversed; see, I’m the baas now. The rapist puts his victim into a submissive pose, etc etc

There is also the dehumanizing of all involved in such scenarios. The perpetrator knows deep in his soul that he is actually proving how inferior he is by having to do such a debasing action, in order to feel superior. At the same time, in a Sartre-ian sense, there is moment of bad faith, where the perpetrator ignores this former knowledge and pretends that the violent action is worth it, for that temporary sensation of feeling superior.

This is why it’s best not to look the attacker in the eye while the attack is taking place, because you mirror the real inferiority back to the attacker as he does his attack – and he (or she) really doesn’t want to see that.

Both the attacker and the victim add to the collective pain body of the planet. For more reading on this topic, consult Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth.

One also has to see all this in context. South Africa is an extremely violent country, and most of the violence takes place between the working class, black inhabitants, who don’t have razor wire and security companies to rely on, or the resources to replace stolen goods with the relative ease that middle or upper class whites do. Hello, wake up Derek, welcome to the Africa of the 21st Century, now colonized by wars and crime.
And the suffering of the working class is far, far worse. I work on the Daily Sun and watch the flow of gore go past with unrelenting monotony, day after day, week after week. What is my little scratch compared to the father who had to watch his son’s door being kicked down - and his son shot to death - while he watched through a keyhole? Or the mother whose shack was burned down in inter-foreigner tensions, who could only rescue her baby, but not her six-year-old daughter, from the flames?