“No good deed goes unpunished” is a phrase that I have always had trouble understanding. It’s related to my ongoing struggle with understanding why bad things happen to good people, especially since there are so few bad people in the world, compared to the good ones.
But every now and again there are examples of the universe showing off her redemptive balance, acts that give us all a bit of hope in the light at the end of the tunnel.
Two such examples caught my attention lately. The latest was a burglary at the Verenigde Gereformeerde Kerk (VGK) in Lentegeur, one of those community venues that you would think would be spared by criminals.
But lately we have seen such places increasingly becoming soft targets for robbers who have clearly lost all semblance of respect for the things that make us human.
In the past, mosques have fallen victim and last year, there was a video of robbers attacking parishioners in the middle of a church service up north.
It is unsettling to the extreme to think that our safety can’t even be guaranteed in the place where we go to find peace.
The idea that we have to look over our shoulders while on a knees in prayer is almost biblical in its evil.
It reminds me of the Psalm that laments about God forsaking us.
But like I said, sometimes something happens that brings fresh hope. In this case, the thief had caused a lot of damage entering the church, before making off with all the electronic equipment – a laptop, microphones, a projector and so on.
But moments later, he was spotted by patrolling law enforcement officers, who arrested him and returned the valuables to the church.
Some will credit the officers for being on the ball. Others will claim divine intervention, especially considering that the church’s chairperson says she said a prayer when she found out about the burglary, both for the return of the items and for the forgiveness of the thief.
Either way, it’s a heartening example of the type of good news we all need a lot more of these days.
Another example happened a few weeks ago, when the Penlyn Estate offices of the Gift of the Givers Foundation was also robbed of resources used to help needy communities.
These are almost always the poorest of the poor that have been hit by disaster. Few can argue that this humanitarian organisation exemplifies compassion – picking up where government and social services regularly drop the ball. So for them to fall victim to a crime that plagues the communities which they so selflessly serve, is the very definition of biting the hand that feeds you.
This time the divine intervention came in the form of disgusted residents coming forward with information that led police to four locations in Hanover Park, where they retrieved the food parcels, boxes of donated clothing, PC monitors, a TV set, microwave oven and more.
Twelve people were arrested and are in the process of being prosecuted. It’s a heart-warming ending that also proves a few things that I have been saying for a while now.
Firstly, members of our communities know exactly who the criminals are that make our lives so unbearable on the Cape Flats. And it’s long overdue that they take on the mantle of responsibility by piemping those criminals. If nothing else, it sends out the message that they are no longer willing to remain silent, making themselves accessories to the crimes.
Secondly, this will eventually give those criminals pause for thought, knowing that their neighbours might actually be the ones anonymously calling the cops on them, instead of being eager customers of stolen items.
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman makes a very good point when he says that this is a good example of what is possible when a community stands against something that’s contrary to their values. “… If we do this together, communities with the police and the country, we can wipe out crime,” he says, and he is absolutely right.
These kinds of crimes only happen because thieves know there’s ready market for their stolen goods, and that market is the communities they live it. These are people who will happily buy that stolen microwave, use those monitors or wear the clothes meant for the victims of fires, without a niggling weight on their conscience.
And they won’t consider the possibility that next time it could be their stolen valuables being sold for a song.
But maybe we are starting to sleep a little less soundly knowing our roles in keeping these crimes alive. And maybe we will start treating every crime in our communities as if it has been committed against Gift of the Givers.