Deadly Beat of South Africa

Many blogsites cover news, culture and peoples (and official languages, all 16 of them) of South Africa. Those run by coloured people praise the post-Apartheid nation to the point of uncritical navel-gazing (e.g. SArocks, SouthAfrica.info), while some managed by white South Africans remain locked in the ugly racist and xenophobic mode of yester-year (although the worst and deadliest xenophobia today is by the hands of black ANC hoodlums, and directed against immigrants from countries even worse off than us).

When this website reports of South Africa and how it rocks it is a fact-based account of events and incidents that shape the country today; for good and bad.

A few weeks ago the president of the country appointed a new police chief, who - like the president himself - has had his frequent brushes with the law. The crook has now been given the presidential permission to introduce a "shoot-to-kill" order for police, with astounding results.

Since the new executive order was given on 1st of October, police shot dead 48 people. Among them were pregnant women, unsuspecting motorists and now even a 3-year old boy who picked up a metal pipe which the firing copper identified as a mortal threat.

Reassurance from a thug: National Police Commissioner Cele

Last Sunday a call to a police station near Johannesburg of a "burglary in progress" alerted 10 cops to a nearby warehouse. A few minutes later the police action was over and seven burglars dead in the dust.

19,000 murders have been committed in 2008 in South Africa, and tourists and visitors and fans of sports events have not been spared. Next year's Football World Cup, staged in several crime hot spots in the country, will undoubtedly see a number of foreigners murdered. That prospect has forced several participating nations to provide their respective players with bullet-proof outfits and to impose a virtual curfew off the lawn. 

In a speech on Thursday, Deputy Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said it was unavoidable for civilians to die in the crossfire between police and criminals.

"In the course of any duty the innocent will be victimised," Mbalula told reporters in Parliament. "In this particular situation where you are caught in combat with criminals, innocent people are going to die not deliberately, but in the exchange of fire. They are going to be caught on the wrong side, not deliberately, but unavoidably. Yes. Shoot the bastards. Hard-nut to crack, incorrigible criminals."

I wonder what would happen in Britain if Home Secretary Alan Johnson would announce similar directives in the House of Commons...