OPINION | SA in need of well-managed value system

A few years ago a friend of mine, who has since passed away, shocked me with an unexpected answer to a question I had asked him. The probing was prompted by me trying to make sense of some frequent atrocities being committed in our society.

I asked him out of concern: “What possesses a man to murder his own family and then himself?”

This was soon after such an incident had occurred, as quite often happens in our country.

The answer was swift: “Kanti uyakuyifumana impendulo kulombuzo wakho (If you wish, you will soon find the answer to your question).”

With a cold shiver bolting down my spine I replied: “Hayi mfokabawo noba andiyazanga ayinani” (No my brother, I do not need to know really).”

The impression I got from his retort was that I would have to become that person before I could understand what drove him to carry out such an act.

Well, I have since resolved that it is not always desirable to know everything, especially the depraved motivations behind horrific crimes.

But this still leaves the question: how does one prevent those crimes that are not fully understood?

These thoughts come to mind as I contemplate the horrific rape of a seven-year-old child in a Pretoria restaurant recently, while her mother sat just metres away.

While it might be of benefit to know what possesses a man to do this kind of deed, I do not actually want to know.

All I care about is how to protect innocent children against monsters like these.

What do we need to know or do to combat the bedfellows of rape, violent crime, corruption and murder?

I suppose the patrons who beat up this predatory monster felt the same way most of us are feeling right now in the country – frustrated and overwhelmed.

The audacity of the crime reflected the rapist’s deep-seated contempt for all humanity.

For what overcomes a man to commit such a crime at all, and then within only metres of other people – and then still, one of them the mother?

But even scarier is the question: what would I do if I was the parent of this little girl?

Someone’s child was raped visiting what should be the safe confines of a restaurant.

This crime requires you and I, as a citizens, to put ourselves in the horrified shoes of the child, and the petrified shoes of the mother.

While we hoped that our system of rules and laws were adequate to deal with this kind of violation, it is evident that the system has failed us – or maybe it was our hopes that were grossly misplaced.

So, what should be clear is that human behaviour is not shaped by a systems of laws, and their enforcement, alone.

The law plays its part in shaping human behaviour, especially when people see that it is consistently applied and effectively enforced.

However, beyond laws are other systems, like a system of values and beliefs, which have a bearing on human behaviour. This is a system that cannot be enforced in the same way that laws can.

It exists in the same realm as personal choice, where the chosen values and beliefs are relatively private. However, it is these values and beliefs that form the motivation for actions which often affect society.

We seem to have ignored the existence of these underlying values and beliefs in our over-zealous pursuit of freedom.

To put it differently, society seems to have forgotten that this system of values and beliefs also needs to be directed, managed and enforced, just as other systems do.

If it is allowed to rest entirely with individuals, we risk the kind of situation that would develop if it was up to each of us to make laws, and manage and enforce them for ourselves.

It would mean each man is a law unto himself.

Those who have influence in society should use it to promote the kinds of values and beliefs that combat criminal behaviour. Leaders whose task it is to collate the systems that make up human society should do their jobs to create an atmosphere for the sort of human behaviour that facilitates bringing about a civilised society.

Otherwise the continued failure to collate these complementary systems may soon produce a massive surge in the horrors of street “justice”.