We all have heard how dangerous our country is but did we ever stop to think about it seriously. It seems that we all read about crime see it on TV but have become immune to the reality of it in our daily lives. This is until it affects you directly,via either your own experience of it or one of your family members. The first sign of social breakdown is normally a higher incidence of crime, it is insidious and creeps up on you always seemingly affecting someone else until finally it affects you in all its horror and your life is then changed forever.
Ask any survivor of violent crime and the story is the same I never thought it would happen to me..why did they think this? Maybe because they had become slowly but surely immune to it and the resulting fear, that it is a reality! Now this is a normal human reaction to stress and fear,that the human mind shuts out in order to function normally. So taking all this into account lets examine how life really is in South Africa:
Daily reports of major and violent crime that has happened(Try counting the reports of violent crime in a 7 day week)
Continual political upheaval( again count the news reports of some political figure making threatening remarks in a 7 day week.
The amount of times you get cross when driving your car enough so that you shouted out loud and shook your head violently.
The number of mentions in the news and general media about trouble citizens are having with some Government department or other in a 7 day week.
The amount of times you gave some change to a beggar at an intersection and how many beggars you see in a normal driving day.
The amount of money South Africans spend on insurance for cover on cars and household property and how this compares to people world wide as a percentage of their earnings.
The percentage of houses and business premises that you can count in a day that have razor wire or electric fences on the boundary wall of their properties.
Now judge in yourself how many times you get excited when seeing justifiable violence in movies and short series programs on TV.
Yes you have finally understood with this simple exercise just how dangerous this county is, now equate this with what you think should be normal and ask yourself do you know what is normal anymore?
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