Crime march

ANOTHER popular campaign against crime is gathering steam and looks set to have an impact like no other.

Entertainer Desmond Dube is behind the call for a Million Person March Against Crime following the slaying of his friend, popular actor and tavern owner Bashimane “Shimi” Mofokeng, who was shot in Mulbarton, Gauteng, last week.

Mofokeng was a prominent citizen and owner of Shimi’s Pub in Orlando and his death during an attempted hijacking has mobilised his neighbours and friends.

Mofokeng’s murder is the latest in a string of chillingly callous killings in Gauteng and elsewhere.

This campaign will grow, unlike others, because its leading voices are black South Africans.

Previous anti-crime campaigns have been led largely by white South Africans and have been denigrated as a thinly-disguised racist response to the new South Africa.

Everyone knows, those critics argued, that black South Africans bear the brunt of crime more than any other group.

They were right. Crime affects everyone – and now for the first time there is a move to bring all communities together to force the state to intensify its fight against the criminal scourge.

The Million Person March on the Union Buildings in Pretoria is planned for mid-April.

A popular protest on this scale needs to happen and should be supported by all of us, even in the Eastern Cape, where our levels of crime pale in comparison to Gauteng and elsewhere.

The impact that crime is having on our society is horrendous in its human and economic cost and it has stolen the lives of some of the most prominent and talented South Africans.

The Sunday Times reported this weekend on the forced migration of skilled Gautengers to the coastal provinces – the Eastern Cape included – due to crime.

While our province and others will welcome this influx of skills and wealth, this is not a trend that can continue without dire consequences for the economic capital of South Africa.

Which society can consider itself normal when top executives are moving their families to safe havens hundreds of kilometres away and then travelling like hired guns in Baghdad to go to work?

The state’s limp and dismissive response to concerns about crime has to end.

As Dube observed: “Now is the time to organise a million-man march on Pretoria – to let the people responsible know how we feel; to make them accountable.

“Let’s do it. Let’s get a million people to tell the government that we’ve had enough.”

As Dube’s wife, Tlotli, observed: “Evil prevails when good men do nothing.”

She is right. We are the good people – and we have had enough.