10/08/2026
Folks, we have a real problem. And it goes far deeper than crime.
Twice in the last 24 hours, I’ve been called to shooting scenes in Johannesburg hotspots. In both cases, the victims had succumbed to their injuries, and I had to declare them dead.
The injuries were horrific. Multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body and head. These are not scenes from a movie. They are real, brutal and deeply disturbing. There is blood everywhere. Injuries that are impossible to unsee. The kind of scenes that stay with you long after you leave.
But what disturbed me almost as much as the violence itself was what happened next.
At both scenes, we had to chase away young children who had wandered over to look at the bodies. Some were barely 10 years old. And in some cases, they were there with their parents.
How can a 10-year-old child see a murdered person lying in the street and simply walk away from it?
How can that not leave a scar?
How can we expect a child exposed to this kind of violence, death and brutality to develop a healthy understanding of life, dignity and the value of another human being?
These are not places for children. These are active crime scenes—often surrounded by angry, emotional crowds, blood and the aftermath of extreme violence. Yet children are standing metres away, watching as though this is just another ordinary event.
And that is what worries me most.
We are not only fighting a crime problem. We are facing a broken culture and, in many cases, a failure of parenting.
When children grow up surrounded by violence, when murder becomes something they witness in their neighbourhood, when a body in the street becomes something to stop and look at, we are teaching them that this is normal.
And if this becomes their normal, what happens when they grow up?
How do we expect them to value human life when human life has been made so cheap in front of them?
We see this far too often. Children playing with a ball or riding their bicycles in the street, just metres from a murder scene. Parents walking past with their children, barely giving the body a second thought.
This should never be normal.
Our children deserve better than to grow up surrounded by bloodshed, violence and indifference.
We have a real problem in this country—and if we only respond to the crime after it happens, we are treating the symptom while ignoring the disease.
The real question is: what are we doing to protect our children from becoming products of this broken environment?
Because if we don't change what our children see, what they are exposed to, and what they are taught to accept as normal, we shouldn't be surprised when the next generation reflects the world we allowed them to grow up in.
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ComMed EMS is a non-profit organisation delivering free emergency medical response services across the greater Roodepoort area, parts of Randburg and surrounding suburbs.
