crime

On Sunday at about 3 o'clock in the morning a man climbed through a window in my mother's house, she woke up and found him crawling down the passage, he overpowered her, tied her up, and stole her car and anything he could load into the car. She lives in a town house complex in Centurion, Pretoria. Thankfully she was not hurt.

My history of crime encounters:
1. At high school a friend and I where riding to school on our bicycles, we were attacked by two men and our bicycles where stolen.
2. My wife was driving home from work, a man broke her car window and stole her handbag.
3. We bought a house in Randburg, two weeks later a man broke the kitchen window and set off the alarm in the process (we weren't home at the time), he got away with my wedding rings. A week later he jumped over our wall and headed straight for the window he had broken previously, this time my wife was in the kitchen and saw him approaching the window, she turned and ran, and triggered the panic alarm. He ran away.

My thoughts on all of this:
Initially I had some fairly negative comments posted here, but I have decided that this blog will not degrade into negative commentary. So in stead I'll use the above examples as a warning to others. No matter what anybody tells you, crime in South Africa is bad. And everybody needs to take safety precautions BEFORE it affects them. Sometimes the simple things help, like locking your handbag in the boot, in stead of on the front seat of the car. Other times it requires spending lots of money for alarm systems and security gates. In the end no amount of money is too little if it can save a life.

But don't wait until it's too late, do it now!!!