There is a scene in Narcos, the TV series about the rise and fall of druglord Pablo Escobar, in which two sicarios (hitmen) have an argument over killing a baby. Her mother, a “loose end” in seething, violent 1990s Bogotá, lies murdered at the foot of the toddler’s high chair.
The kid will rat us out, says the leader. The other gunman is sickened. “How much do you remember from when you were two years old?” he asks.
We have long passed that inflection point in this country’s staggeringly violent history since Jan van Riebeeck and his sicarios — all members of that original gang, the Dutch East India Company — beached their boats and stuck the company flag in “their” turf.
As you do, so shall others.
In our cowardly new world, it comes as no surprise to hear that a man used a baby as a human shield in a gunfight with a rival gang in Bonteheuwel. Let that sink in: a baby. Who died later on the operating table.
Meanwhile, in Philippi, a DA MP pulls a handgun to fight off gangsters who threw rocks at his car, smashing his teeth and injuring his colleagues. He wounds one, who is arrested when he goes to hospital for treatment.
And in the leafy suburbs on the slopes of the flat-topped mountain, where the gangs don’t (yet) reach, from the distance of headlines the residents express their opinions through mouthfuls of dry wine (apologies to David Kramer).
Cape Town in 2025 is Bogotá or Cali in the 1990s, grappling with drug-fuelled violence in which innocents are gunned down in fights they had nothing to do with. Meanwhile, the government promises action and task teams and commissions of inquiry, while cowards use kids as bulletproof vests.