More thoughts on "The Dogs of War"...

Some of you may know that we had our house on show last weekend, with a view to selling it a bit quicker than the estate agents are prone to do normally. The guy who came around to house-sit does not work for the estate agents on a full-time basis, but does it to substitute his miserable salary he gets as a teacher in SA (the good ones really are paid crap).

"K" is a nice guy, stuck somewhere around the late 70's, a wannabe hippy I think. Nice guy though, very much into teaching and things childlike, so much so that when an Indian couple came to look at the place he spent more time cooing at their youngster than trying to sell the fuckin' house, I think. But anyway...I don't think he's a paedophile, so he's okay.

When K was leaving on Sunday we were having a chat, standing in the driveway, and somehow we got onto the state of affairs in the country. I mentioned, jokingly, that the Deputy Minister for Safety and Security (see previous posting), or DMSS as I will call her, was my "new hero". I thought K was going to throw his newspaper at me. "Nooooo", he says, "that scares the shit out of me".

He gave a couple of reasons for his fear of the situation and afterward, once he'd left, I got to thinking about them in more depth.

On the one hand, I agree with his fears, in that it might open up a whole new kind of war in SA, where more illegal guns find their way onto our streets, arming the already-armed-to-the-teeth thieves and assaulters, making it more dangerous for peace-loving folks to survive in an already stressful socio-political climate. K seems to think that the body count of innocent bystanders will rise and I can't disagree with that fear either.

Personally, I think the DMSS was subliminally telling the police forces that they need to catch a wake-up call, that they are failing in their jobs to protect the innocent and are in a job that demands that one day, they may need to make the ultimate sacrifice with their lives.

At the moment, our police are mostly fat, lazy, stupid, ignorant of the law and human rights, slobs who would find it harder to run around the block than an Italian pizza parlour owner who eats most of his profits. The police force conscripts see the job as easy (fuck knows, every time you see a gathering of cops next to the highway, on the pretence of "policing", they are all standing around joking and laughing, usually in squads of between four and twelve at a time), with the opportunity to perhaps make a buck on the side (corruption is rife in the police force), work some overtime chatting up the chicks at a public event, be seen to be driving a souped-up BMW while on patrol, and generally just acting like they own the fuckin' world, like everything's a big fuckin' joke.

Just as an aside to prove my point...the very moment we arrived back in Shit Towne from our holiday in Hermanus, we witnessed a classic police brutality event. We were just turning off the highway when, in the fast lane, an unmarked black BMW X5 was driving up the backside of an old Volvo that was obviously waiting for a gap to move back into the middle lane. The X5 was flashing headlights and hooting, so close to the Volvo that you couldn't squeeze a credit card between them. The Volvo managed, 200m later, to move across and the X5 drove alongside, whereupon the passenger leans out of the window, R5 assault rifle in his hands pointing at the hapless Volvo driver, and uses the rifle to slap the side mirror off the Volvo. They then sped off, laughing at the event. I was gob-smacked to such an extent that I took down the registration number of the X5 and called it in to the police hot line as soon as I got home, gave them all the details and generally expressed my disgust at what had happened. Needless to say...I haven't heard anything more about the incident (like I really expected to...not!!!)

No, I don't hate the police. I admire some of them for their conviction of wanting to protect the public from all sorts of bad shit. The rest of them that are there for their "gravy train" handouts though, I despise. They are a waste of my hard-earned tax money and must be rooted out at the earliest opportunity and punished for the crimes they are/have committed while in uniform.

I also, however, think there needs to be some form of scrutinising the cadets before they go into police school, better than (if there is one) the current way in which it is done. Sadly, some of the best cops this country has had, have ended up dying for being so good at their jobs, gunned down (assassinated) by the very criminals I'm talking about, because they've gotten too close to the perpetrators.

Anyway, back to the subject...

I also think the DMSS' statment is a warning to criminals, actual and wannabe, that they can/should expect to be on the end of more violent reaction to their deeds, something that is sadly lacking currently. I say fight fire with fire, and if it means a shoot-out, so be it. The KwaZulu Natal road traffic police have a "zero tolerance" for people committing traffic offences and this policy should be taken nationwide at a SA Police Services level. If we can't have the death penalty brought back (apparently Mr Mandela stated that it would not happen in his lifetime) then we need a zero tolerance policy to be shown toward violent criminal acts. It's about time some of the criminals and perpetrators of violent crime started dying, instead of innocent bystanders and peace-loving people who want to spend time with their families in the deserved safety of their homes.

There certainly is a trend towards criminals being "ratted on" by members of their own communities, but it is not happening to the extent I believe it should. There is still a tendency toward "ignorance is bliss" and not wanting to get involved in situations, but unless we all get involved to whatever extent it takes, we will continue to have more of the same old shit and the criminals will continue to roam the streets unchallenged and not paying their dues back to society.

Sadly, to some extent, there is also a criminal mentality prevailing in the country...let me explain. I mentioned corruption earlier. On too many occasions have we all heard (and some of us experienced, myself included) of bribes being paid to cops in order to not have to pay a fine, or worse (like get arrested for drunken driving - not me). On too many occasions have we heard of people perpetrating crimes (though they are jokingly seen as petty, they still adversely affect some poor bastard) and tell people about them after a few drinks, like it's a big joke. On too many occasions have we.....you get the picture, I think.

The point is that, if whatever one does is unlawful, it is a crime and we as a society need to move away from that way of doing and seeing things. Live life honestly, and it will benefit the entire population and not just a select few. Karma is a funny thing...one day it WILL come back and bite you in the arse, and you better not complain when it does.

Let the criminals and perpetrators of crime beware, I say...eventually you will get bust and I hope you come off second best.

This "posting" has turned into more of a "ranting" so I'm going to stop here...