The Chief Editor of Goal South Africa, Ignat Manjoo,
reflects on the senseless killing of Senzo Meyiwa and tells a very
personal story of the problem of crime in his nation
During the Fifa World Cup qualifying draw in Durban in 2007, former Austrian goalkeeper Peter Burgstaller was robbed of his mobile phone and then shot and killed while at a local golf course.
Sadly he would not be the last goalkeeper to be senselessly murdered in South Africa. On Sunday, in the town of Vosloorus, Bafana Bafana No.1 Senzo Meyiwa was shot and killed at the home of his girlfriend following another armed robbery. Meyiwa had been born and had spent his formative years in Durban.
This writer also grew up in Durban, and has first-hand experience of gun-related crime. I have had a pistol pointed at my forehead while being robbed as I purchased a piano at a furniture store.
When I lived in Johannesburg my house was burgled by armed robbers who jumped out of my bedroom window when I opened the door. Such raids leave you feeling that your private space has been stripped raw and violated.
Whilst residing in Cape Town, a few months before the 2010 Fifa World Cup, I was held at gunpoint in a historic garden in the city centre in return for my mobile phone. For months after these encounters, I re-experienced the terror every time I sensed fast movements around me.
Most of my family members have been the victims of burglaries, and many of these include violent break-ins in their middle-income suburbs in Durban or Johannesburg. One of my colleagues at Goal has been burgled about a dozen times in the space of a year in one of Cape Town’s most trendy districts.
Despite all this terror, I have always defended my country when abroad and well enough to convince my foreign wife to move to South Africa. My foreign friends pictured South Africa with lions roaming the streets and western-style gunfights. I’ve had to tame this wild perception for years.
When I was travelling Europe for four years, I learned that you can leave your keys in your car in Bosnia and sleep with your door open in Austria. When I was staying in Chicago in the United States I had to be more mindful of my surroundings, but nothing compares to the level of security that we have in South Africa. Here we believe that with our burglar bars, electric fences and multiple key-locks that we have a chance of being safe and achieving peace - even though we can be imprisoned in our own living room.
The Oscar Pistorius murder trial underlined how paranoia can lead to self-inflicted tragedy, culpable homicide in South Africa. Immediately after this much publicised case, our country has had to suffer the murder of our football captain, Meyiwa. The optimists are hoping that the death of Bafana Bafana’s hero will force our politicians to create stricter laws. Here crime has often been blamed on the legacy of Apartheid (when the country was racially segregated between 1948 and 1994).
What about the legacy of this generation’s 2010 World Cup? The tournament was hailed as South Africa’s shining light, a tournament that was held without any major public incidents. However, four years on, districts such as the Cape Flats in Cape Town continue to be amongst the biggest crime capitals in the world - crime mainly caused by the poor against the poor.
During the World Cup, the petty criminals and the homeless mysteriously disappeared from Cape Town’s city. They (were) moved far away to protect the tourists. They resurfaced on the streets like drugged and intoxicated zombies after Spain lifted the trophy. The World Cup was about putting on a show with ‘white elephant’ stadiums for tourists, but we failed to address the elephants in our own houses.
Safa President Dr Danny Jordaan championed South Africa’s successful bid for 2010, but didn’t mask or mince his words after the murder of Meyiwa.
"Isn't it high time we introduce the Senzo Meyiwa gun law?" asked Jordaan. Our football association’s leader only recently stated that South Africa is not interested in hosting the 2015 Afcon because of Africa’s other threat, Ebola. Back home our greatest threat… is ourselves.
"There are too many illegal guns around and here is a young man mowed down without mercy. This cannot be allowed to continue," added Dr Jordaan.
All these questions should be sent to South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma, who also addressed the media after the death of the Orlando Pirates goalkeeper.
“The law enforcement authorities must leave no stone unturned in finding his killers and bring them to justice. Words cannot express the nation’s shock at this loss,” he said.
The death of Meyiwa shouldn’t change the perception of South Africa overnight. Nearly all of our players are from poor areas where they’ve rubbed shoulders with criminals. Former Bafana captain Steven Pienaar, for example, is grateful for how football saved him from these horrors. When asked where he would be if it wasn’t for football, Pienaar told the BBC, "Maybe in jail somewhere or maybe dead," before explaining that that was the fate of his childhood friends.
Us South Africans always imagined that footballers are untouchable. That has never been true. Not even outside South Africa. In 2007, former England captain Steven Gerrard had his house burgled by a masked gang while his wife was present.
There have been footballers murdered elsewhere, with at least 43 reported cases worldwide. When Ghana failed to qualify for the Afcon in 1971, Robert Mensah was stabbed during an alteraction at a bar and died days later. In Colombia, defender Andres Escobar was murdered after his own goal helped eliminate the country from the 1994 World Cup in America. In 2002, Hungarian footballer Tibor Simon was beaten to death by security personell outside a pub in Budapest.
We must be careful not to generalise and stereotype, but we must also accept that crime is a proven cancer in South Africa - a cancer that spreads to the sport of football. This time the government won’t be able to sweep the problem under the carpet. The death of Senzo Meyiwa must not be in vain.
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