I live in South Africa. Let me tell you straight up that when President Donald Trump tells you that bad things are happening in South Africa...trust him!! He speaks the truth and don't let anyone or anything tell you otherwise. I have seen it for many years. I have friends who have been held up at gun point. I have a friend who was raped by two black males. I have been burgled so many times and thankfully I was not at home those times except for an attempted robbery where I managed to scare the perpertrators off. EVERY DAY of my life here in South Africa you hear of some awful thing that has happened! You cannot even get into an Uber these days for fear of your life! You just cannot trust these drivers. They are kidnapping people, especially women! I remember two years ago on a hot summer evening I was about to fall asleep. Next thing I heard a woman screaming for help. Her voice was in the distance but kept getting louder and louder. I eventually realised she was in a moving car and this car was basically driving down the road I lived in and was heading for the highway. I could hear the fear in her voice! It was awful because there was nothing I could do. It was a speeding car. I had no idea what the car looked like and was not even sure if it would go onto the highway. If I had called the police how would they have gotten there in time? It haunts me everytime I think of this. That I could do nothing to save this woman except pray to God to help her. This is only one of many incidents. I could carry on and tell you of many more incidents but I would end up writing a book! In particular I want to write about an incident from yesterday.
Yesterday I was working on the laptop and next thing I heard about 4 gunshots go off up the road from me. This was at 16:00pm in the afternoon. I actually said out loud : "Did I just hear gunshots?"....next thing I heard three loud crashes and car brakes screech right outside the bounday wall of my complex. This time I said : "What the hell was that now"... My immediate thought was that a car had crashed through our boundary wall. I ran to a point along the wall where you can look onto the road. I got there and there were already two or three other people from my complex. On the other side of the wall, across the road I saw a white car was on the pavement with it's bonnet pointing into the road and the rear end facing the boundary wall on the opposite side. A woman in another car had pulled onto the pavement and was running towards us with her cell phone screaming which number does she call for emergency...we don't have 911 like in the states...we gave her the number and she then called them...within a few seconds we already had First Road Emergency tow trucks on the scene...we call them vultures (not in a nasty way as it is good that they do arrive quickly as they have direct contact with other emergency services) because they seem to appear out of no where when there is an accident. The woman that pulled over told us she witnessed a "Hit" (assassination). The driver of the car was at the traffic light in front of her just up the road from me. Next thing a black mercedes pulled up, two guys got out and shot this driver through the window. She says they fired six shots, jumped in their car and sped off. I said I had heard the shots but somehow only heard four. She says the driver then floored the car and went racing down the road, lost control and hit the pavement twice before coming to a standstill. When First Road Emergency arrived they said the guy was still breathing but was riddled with bullets and his brains were plastered on the roof of the car. I know that sounds awful. You don't even see that in movies. Reality is this is real life and it is frigging scary!! The Police arrived very quickly and took action to close the road off at both ends as at this time of day it is peak hour traffic and people were slowing down to see what was happening. Some driver even got all agro with the Police because he could not get past to get home!! Have you ever?? He can see Police, Tow trucks and Emergency services and a bust up car! The ambulance took forever to get here...but perhaps they were advised that there was nothing they could have done for the driver...he did not breathe for much longer after the tow trucks arrived. When the Police arrived he had already passed away. They obviously called the wife and she arrived with her daughter (I guess the daughter may be 16 or 18 years old). I got all tearfull when I say the wife collapse on the pavement when they told her he had been shot and had died. They would not let her near the car. Only rightly so. She would have been traumatised for life if she saw the state of her husband. Turns out he was on his way home from work and was close to home. They live down the road. This guy probably at first when he got shot must have immediately thought he needs to get home. He was a CEO at some high Tech company. They only cleared the scene at about 21:00 last night. I wasn't out there anymore. I just heard them all drive off. This is life in South Africa! These perpertrators know that they will get away with murder. To do a "hit" in broad day light in peak hour traffic where there were so many witnesseses to this shooting tells you exactly how brazen they were! I was so angry! These men took a life! For what?? How do they sleep at night knowing that they took a life??! A family now without a husband and father. This happens so often now. People get taken out in broad daylight. Not so long ago a woman who was going to attend a court hearing regarding a labour dispute was shot and killed. She was in her early thirties and had just qualified as a lawyer. Shot right outside the courthouse! Just last week another road was closed due to a "crime scene", just like our road was closed yesterday for a crime scene. My heart breaks for the family from yesterday's incident. It saddens me that this is what life is all about in South Africa. For those of us that live here the sad thing is we have become so desensitised by the brutality of what we see that it's like just an acceptable part of daily life. If anyone from another country had to hear and see what we did yesterday they would be shocked that we all just took it so calmly...like it's just another day...well that IS exactly what it is for us living here...it IS just another day in our lives here in South Africa. Yes, of course it is terrible. Yes, of course it is sad... BUT there is NOTHING we can do to stop the crime... it is just beyond any form of control...thanks to our fantastic government!! Please don't misunderstand the word "Fantastic" in this context...they are far from it!! Had they not opened the borders for every tom, dick and harry, crime would not be out of control! Hence people in South Africa are now taking action by arranging this March on March inititative that took place on 30 June 2026. "March on March" is a citizen-led civic organization in South Africa advocating for stricter immigration enforcement and the departure of undocumented foreign nationals. Thousands of migrants have already fled the country in fear of their lives. It is such a pity that this was not done years ago!
