There is no crime here, I promise!
The police are hell-bent on whipping some criminal ass it seems, but only because of the world cup. We have a huge amount of money being spent on crime prevention, including officers and reservists, vehicles and equipment and this is because everyone is having a shit-frenzy about being a victim on the streets of South Africa. The message I am receiving here is that these coppers only ‘care’ when the international community becomes the loud-hailing voice of reason that crime is rampant. Us locals have been victims, know someone who has been a victim or very vividly can imagine an evil criminal calamity befalling the general public. We have been moaning and complaining, barricading ourselves in our penetrable ‘fortresses’, looking over our shoulders and only now when a bunch of foreign fuckers walk our beautiful yet violent land are the police prone to give a damn.
The policing heavyweights are basically jacking each other off with their mock-intimidator cowboy mentality of how all these criminals are going to get a pistol-whipping. It makes me laugh and if I experienced real emotions, perhaps cry. It is fucking ridiculous. Some of this petty rhetoric! It’s like a C-grade movie. I can hear the eTV guy’s voice: Friday night is action night on eTV. Watch Bheki Cele and Nathi Mthethwa kick criminal butt. Cut to Cele straddling a badly beaten criminal, uttering lines like: a friend of a criminal is a criminal and I am no friend tsotsi. This whilst Mthethwa, on his knees, shirt ripped open, drenched in sweat with a maniacal glint yelling to the criminal consciousness: “We are not friends, we are out to get them. We will make them run all the time. That’s why we are always tightening the screws.”
I do believe based on all the investment at least and ever-increasingly the soothing calm that comes from the police anti-criminal rhetoric…? that the world cup will probably see very few crimes. Purses will be snatched, pint glasses will be put through faces and other very unsavoury things will occur, but probably just to us unlucky fuckers that live here. I hope there is not some twisted tacit agreement that the police sacrifice us for the safety of the foreigners. That’s not xenophobic, I don’t want to burn them, I just don’t want to be getting anally raped whilst my wallet is taken from me because Hans the German supporter is lodging a complaint about a stolen camera.
