South Africa, the new Wild West?

According to a worldwide poll conducted by experts, South Africa is rated the most violent country in the world with a violent crime occurring every 10 minutes somewhere in the country.

Although I don’t believe in averages, I think that the violent nature of the country must not be underestimated.

Over the past two years, the Johannesburg CBD has become somewhat like Tombstone Arizona in the 1800's with gunfights reminiscent of the great ‘Gun Fight at O.K Coral’ being a regular occurrence.

The latest incident occurred yesterday when the Askria opened fire with rubber bullets on a crowd of striking truck drivers who are 'peacefully' protesting about wages. This is less then a month after the 5 0 fired rubber bullets into a crowd of 'peacefully' striking taxi drivers. As you can see, the South African Police Service doesn't like peaceful protests.

It is REALLY scary to think that in less then 30 days, there have been two gunfights in South Africa’s financial capital.

My favorite incident was last year when the JMPD went on strike in the JHB CBD and the SAPS opened fire with live rounds. Not to be outdone, the JMPD took out their six-shooters and returned the fire.

This would have been fine, except that the gunfight took place at 4:30 pm when town is gridlocked with people going home from work.

This could pose a problem during 2010 when the eyes of the world will be on South Africa during the FIFA World Cup. Imagine South Africa’s international image should there be such a gunfight during the world cup? And don’t think this is not a possibility, Government will be well advised to get their house in order, because already the crowd in South Africa is fickle and will TOI TOI at the drop of a hat.

But is there a solution in sight? Seemingly not, when you have the future president of South Africa jumping up and down on a stage making himself look like a TIT singing about machine guns, the light at the end of the tunnel seems very dim indeed!

In the past, when a situation like this presented itself, a lawman of some rapport was called in to find a resolution.

In the summer of 1881, desperado’s who were hell bent on lawlessness and general skulduggery overran Tombstone Arizona. In response, the marshal’s office called in the famous lawman Wyatt Earp to assist his brothers Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp to rid the town of the desperados. One gang in particular was a problem, the Earp’s, assisted by Doc Holiday took to the town square and confronted the Clanton Gang which ultimately resulted in the most famous gunfight in history, The Gunfight at O.K Coral. Three of the Clanton’s were killed with only two of the Earp’s injured.

Now this is all heroic and stuff, but imagine getting a lawman such as Wyatt Earp in South Africa to sort out our problems? The Clanton Gang only numbered 10 people. TOI TOIing locals number thousands at a time! 100 Wyatt Earps cant sort out our problems.

The other route would be to hire a gunman/bounty hunter to target specific perpetrators.

Between 1878 and 1881, Billy the Kid was the most wanted desperado in the Wild West, by all accounts he was the second most wanted desperado of all time behind Jessie James. His reign of terror was so great that lawman Patrick ‘Pat” Garrett was hired as a bounty hunter to assassinate the Kid.

Whats interesting to note is that the price on the Kids head at the time was a measly $500.

Now who the FEK would such a lawman in South Africa target? If you kill the one, a more evil bastard will just take his place.

Watching The Magnificent Seven on the weekend it was brought to the attention of the audience that it must have been nice to live in the Wild West. Someone pisses you off, you take out your gat and shoot them down, no court case, no blood feuds no license for the gat nothing. Mind you, how different is South Africa presently?