One of the unintended outcomes of last week’s horror shoot-out is a call for more ‘feel-good’ stories. You know, the ‘nice stories’ like the nice gardens at Eventide Mews and the plethora of church bazaars that dot our social calendars.
Strangely, the ‘bad news’ stories of man’s failures, short-comings and evil-doing spread faster than the news of man’s achievements.
But there were elements even from that incident that gave one hope: like the security guard who bravely risked his own life and got wounded in the process while taking on the heavily armed gang and the police husband and wife couple who were first on the scene and pitted their police pistols against an AK-47 rifle and a barrage of illegal firearms.
Sadly, the young passer-by who was also shot just after alighting a taxi remains in hospital.
Another fall-out from the shooting was the usual call for the installation of security cameras to clamp down on seemingly out of control crime in the CBD. Dundee, we are told, is the only town in the Northern KZN, not to have CCTV coverage making it easy pickings for criminals who refer to it as ‘like stealing biscuits from granny’s kitchen’,
The proposal for cameras was first mooted at least 14 years ago. Despite promises and discussions, nothig has happened. It begs belief that the Council could spend R52 200 on Nandos chicken to feed young maidens and others in a blink of an eye but cannot see it’s way clear to see to the safety of its own residents.
The chicken becomes tasteless when you spend Sunday morning dodging bullets on Victoria Street. So why are there no cameras?
One sage has suggested that this may expose who picks up the ladies of the night after 9pm. Another said that crime is so interwoven in our society that it could be that the criminals are in any case running the show. Whatever the reason it would indeed be tragic if it takes the death of a community leader in some kind of robbery to spur on the Council to set up these cameras.