Africa-Press – Eswatini. WITH 48 hours before Christmas, many people are probably preoccupied with how and where to enjoy the jingle of this year’s festivities. For others, however, crime is pick-pocketing this joy away, leaving them with very few places to hide.
At this rate, the acting NATCOM of police and her colleagues in the security cluster cannot afford to celebrate Christmas – not in a country of gun-toting every other day and in a society where you regard yourself as fortunate not to come across any knife-wielding gangs while out and about in the neighbourhood – some of whom have been brazen enough to rob people in churches. These gangs are recruiting schoolchildren who have taken bullying to unprecedented levels to do their bidding, even going as far as using them to squeeze through what we thought were burglar barring features in our homes.
Minimise
To minimise possible robbery, many citizens do not carry cash but rather use their cellphones to transact, if they do not have these gadgets snatched from their hands in broad daylight. We applaud the advancement in technology, but this has brought its fair share of cybercrime misery for many, no thanks to cunning ‘technocrats’ preying on the ignorant newbies who are still navigating the safety features of all the apps that try to outbid each other on simplicity, much to the glee of the cyber thieves.
This is one of the reasons why it is hard to convince members of stokvels to bank their savings or use the mobile applications to transact. However, misery knows no boundaries. The year 2023 raised the bar with dramatic losses of savings, the most classic being one treasurer (who should actually take up acting) tying himself up to fake a robbery.
Then we have the rise in the number of robberies in rural shops, where thieves simply walk in, point a gun and walk out with all the cash at the tills.
The form of weaponry has also gone beyond guns, as we witnessed some ‘friends’ from Asia taking cash from the till without even pointing a gun. There is no telling what kind of spell they cast on the shop staff, but the video footage tells the story of the ‘invisible guns’ better. Unbelievable! We have also had walk-in robberies at the Mbabane Government Hospital where one brazen crook walked into the accounts office, stabbed the clerk and walked out with the day’s takings. Prior to this, a gang had ignored the security personnel and laid into a stabbed patient waiting for medical attention. He is lucky to be alive.
Syndicate
Meanwhile, shoplifting syndicates have upped their game with ‘jamming’ devices that deactivate the sensors at the door, as was the case with the man who robbed five shops in one day in broad daylight. Speaking of jamming devices, this tool seems to be gaining popularity as truck drivers tell of their hijackings on the highways of the ‘land of gold’ next door.
Sophistication is undoubtedly the name of the game and it has taken root in high-rise buildings where our ‘cheeseboys’ are playing chess with people’s hard-earned money. Millions of Emalangeni worth of pensions have vanished from the vaults under the pretext of investment schemes that have turned out to be hoaxes. Now there is a concerted effort to try to blame it all on the ‘policemen’ known as the FSRA. Yes, cops are hired to prevent crime, but doesn’t crime start when an individual begins devising ways and means to bypass the roadblocks and checkpoints governing these funds and then crossing fingers they do not get caught?
Now we blame the cops for not stopping them while they were crafting these schemes in the boardroom? Come on, who are you kidding? They must bring back the money and make up for the miserable Christmas they have caused for hundreds of people, some of whom had no say when their children’s inheritance was gambled to the highest bidder. Then, of course, there are the cartels that have established themselves in various territories, from hard-core drugs and dagga to industries in the mainstream economy, where tenders now have company logos stamped on them even before being put out to bid.
Coruption
These cartels have given high status to corruption, which our youth now look up to. I will not belabour on the obvious regarding the demise of the institution that ought to have curbed this evil decades ago, but unbundling this rot will require many sleepless nights and brainstorming by the NATCOM and all related anti-crime entities. It will require self-introspection and pruning, as infiltration of criminal elements in the forces is the biggest threat to our security.
When new Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Prince Simelane suggested that the country had reached a crime level that required random raids by security forces to cleanse our communities of undesirable elements, he was vilified. I think it is time to have coffee with the man and to share more ideas with him on how best this could be done, particularly on weeding out the proliferation of guns that are in wrong hands. This exercise, however, should start within the security forces. I have deliberately omitted all the statistics of murder, robberies and millions of Emalangeni lost to white collar crime because it will simply take the ‘merry’ out of your Christmas.
What is critical to note is that we cannot allow gangs, syndicates and cartels to take over this country. As Nelson Mandela once said; “Safety and security do not just happen, they are a result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.”
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