A group of five men stopped a man and mugged him in broad daylight in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the attack was captured on video.
In an event that is common in South Africa, the victim was walking along the road when the gang attacked him. He tried to struggled but they took his phone and wallet.
People watched and filmed the attack but couldn’t help him.
Some of the reactions on social media point out that there’s no outrage because South Africans are the ones committing the crime, not citizens of other countries.
Commentators claim it seems cool when South Africans rob and kill but an abomination when another national does even what is less than that.
The story was linked to the ‘Nigerians Must Fall’ that trended on Twitter some months ago after a nearly naked South African woman was filmed twerking for Nigerian men.
South Africans accused Nigerians of coming to their country to commit all sorts of atrocities.
Some South Africans have blamed the mugging on Zimbabweans and are already trending a hashtags to call out Zimbabwe citizens living in South Africa.
Blame-game seems rife in South Africa and other nationals are often scapegoats who get labelled for crime in the country while the locals’ crimes seem acceptable and normalised.
Recent South Africa’s 2019/2020 police crime statistics revealed that, at least one in three people die of gun shots in Gauging province, as and the murder rate continues on its nine-year upward trend.
South Africa’s opposition parties: the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the Congress of The People (Cope) said the government was losing the battle against criminals.
It was reported that between April 2019 and March 2020, 4,555 people were murdered in Gauteng, an increase of 60 over the previous year.
Back in 2011/2012 Gauteng had only 2 995 murders. Nationally, there were 21,325 murders – a 1,4% increase from 2018/2019.
Minister of Police, Bheki Cele did said there were some positive trends in the statistics. He said: “Fellow South Africans, the crime statistics for 2019/2020 reflects the slowing down of the increase in violent crimes”.
In fact, Institute of Security Studies (ISS) researcher, Andrew Faull pointed out that if South Africa’s population growth was taken into consideration, the murder rate would have been closer to zero. He said this was a possible sign that certain crime fighting initiatives were bearing fruit.
South Africa’s crime menace is worrisome as people live in great fear in the country.
