Daylight Robbery

I was robbed yesterday. I was enjoying one of my favourite spots in Cape Town, a secret little bench up signal hill - I went with Adi and Chelsea and Dylan, we parked the car and walked to this little bench where you can sit and there's no-one else around, and the view is awesome.

We're loving the scenery, and we come back to the car to discover that the small rear left window on Adi's car has been smashed, and the seats moved forward so that the perpetrators could make off with both Adi and Chelsea's handbags, as well as my work bag.

Whilst this has been mostly an annoyance more than anything else, the total value of stolen goods must be at least upwards of R15 000, if you count two cell phones and an iPod, a couple of CDs and flash drives, my gym bag, the R1000 they managed to withdraw from Chelsea's account, the R300 in Dylan's wallet, as well as all the ID books and driver's licenses.

It may be interesting to note - I had just received a phone call as we got to the car, my call log shows this as 17:17pm. When at the bank this morning, Chelsea was told that R1000 was withdrawn from her account at 17:18pm, so those fuckers must have had a car with them, and broken into the car as soon as we were beyond earshot of the car, and driven straight to an ATM.

Anyway, I was thinking about the implications of this. Chelsea, prior to said event, was saying how she's been donating to charities, giving away clothes, giving money to beggars, even thinking about working in a soup kitchen. Now, she's on the "fuck the world" path, not giving nothing to no-one. That got me thinking.

Those people have nothing (correction, they have nothing but a few cell phones, R1300, a gym outfit, an iPod, and new IDs), but we were still able to go home and get some cash that was at home and have KFC for dinner, have a warm shower, grab some DVDs and then hit a warm pillow for some shut eye. Those kids probably didn't have all those luxuries (well, they probably did, but the point is they're stealing because they don't have what we have, presumably).

I know my little R2 handout at the robot is not going to stop some kid from stealing, but if we all stopped giving, more people would have less, and maybe crime would get worse? Who knows? I guess with the world going the way it is, petty crime is only going to get worse, as people have to eat and feed their families. I know I'd steal if I had to provide for my families and that was my only option left (granted, I would much rather get a job as a gardener or car guard or something, so I couldn't imagine not being able to get any job at all). It's sad that the world is just spiralling and spiralling on down.

On the upside, at least, Home Affairs was apparently awesome: Adi and Chelsea and Dylan had their fingerprints were scanned, and they were given temporary IDs within minutes. At least something works, eh?