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Reports on murder, rape and armed robberies have been monopolising the front pages of the newspaper for several concurrent weeks now.

Like you, we are reeling under this bombardment of vicious and senseless violence. We are standing as horrified, watching an evil rot spreading over the fabric of our society, threatening to destroy everything that is beautiful and good and noble.

MC Botha, the editor of this newspaper wrote in his editorial column a fortnight ago that far from relishing all this violence, reporters find little joy in writing reports on vile deeds that seem to be a symptom of a sick society.

I have personally been accused by a gentleman, representing “one of the old families in Hermanus” of sensationalising a report on a rape on the cliff path last year. The man, almost incoherent with anger, told me to go back to Johannesburg (where I lived for many years).

A little while later, another gentleman, the victim of an armed robbery, instructed me that I “was probably sorry that there were not bodies scattered all over the floor” when I tried to interview some of his employees (who have been locked away at pistol point) in an effort to convey the horror of the incident to the public.

Unfortunately we are confronted by a reality that is both unpleasant and unpalatable. We will however fail society if we belittle these horrific deeds, pretending that murder, rape and violent robberies are just a part of everyday life to be ignored or swept under the carpet.

Talking about violence will not make it go away but at least we can condemn it for the unacceptable breach of order and civilisation that it is.

At the very least we can make the public at large aware that life today is not business as usual and that we all have to be more alert and yes, maybe it is high time that we become our brother's keeper!

For a long time, Hermanus remained a haven, a little paradise where we could all escape from the mayhem elsewhere. That, unfortunately, is no longer true.

One of the main causes for the increase in crime in our lovely seaside town is the continuous influx of unemployed people from rural areas to overpopulated townships in the area.

This is a national problem of such magnitude that it is regarded as a major instigating factor in the tide of xenophobia that recently swept the country.

And, as in the case with the Eskom chaos, the current government, for far too long, brushed off the warning signs as insignificant.

Fact is that there are many desperately hungry, unemployed people in this town. Some of them only ask for jobs or bread but some have become pawns of crime lords in the cities and they are dangerous.

Personally investigate

I have written about a couple of incidents where members of the public felt that the police have brushed off their complaints, even refused to open cases. When taking these complaints up with the police commissioner of Hermanus, Phumzile Cetyana, he promised that he would personally investigate these incidents and gave his own cellphone number for publication so that people who are not happy with the police service could phone him.

This same Cetyana had given his cellphone number to every foreign resident in Zwelihle during the current xenophobia incidents and literally patrolled the streets day and night in order to chase the criminal elements out of the township.

On Thursday last week, my morning started with an interview with one of our magistrates, Preggy Govender. Some people scattered muti (some vile powdery substance) on his bench in court on Wednesday just before the start of a hearing of the Absa murder suspects.

The idea was to put a sangoma's spell on him, either to sway his opinion or to “get him out of the system”.

Far from being put off by the incident, Govender vowed that he would continue to see that justice prevails even if it means that his own life was endangered.

I was going home on Thursday when I drove past a stabbing incident at the Strati's supermarket next to the taxi rank in town. The police on duty told me that the victim was taken to hospital and I called one of my colleagues to follow up on the case.

When I arrived home, the doors of the study at our house were standing open. I thought it curious and entered the house via the study and not the front door. The laptops on the desk that my husband and I share were gone. According to my daughter who was at home, somebody must have entered the study between the time that she came back home after taking my domestic assistant to Zwelihle and my arrival at home - a question of about 20 minutes.

Two very polite police officers arrived within five minutes after being called and took our details. I asked them about the stabbing and they told me that, according to their knowledge, the victim was fighting for his life. This news on top of the break-in, made me feel sick, literally.

It would have been the seventh murder in four weeks in the area.

The police promised that they would investigate the break-in and tried to locate our laptops. A little while later, while I was at a meeting, an inspector came to interview my husband.

All the police officers sympathised with our loss. I later heard that the victim of the stabbing thankfully did not die.

In this town, there are still people who are valiantly trying to stem the tide of crime. It is our task as journalists to show you both sides of the mirror.

Don't kill the messenger.

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