The thing that sticks in my mind the most about Andre de Ruyter’s explosive TV interview is the attempt on his life.
He previously spoke about the poisoning of his coffee before he sat down with eNCA’s Annika Larsen last week.
That’s when he elaborated on the dirty business involved in the corruption in and around Eskom and its infrastructure ecosystem.
I used to read about Russia’s symbiotic oligarch-political landscape with detached bemusement.
Every now and again, a government official, or an oil tycoon would die under curious and mysterious circumstances.
People would supposedly commit suicide, get poisoned, infected or fall out of high-rise buildings with surprising regularity.
They were almost always politically connected, always powerful and often problematic, as they started asking questions to challenge the status quo or to appease their guilty conscience.
It sends shivers down my spine to think that we have become no different.
We have long lived with the knowledge that life is cheap in South Africa, particularly in the ganglands.
And perhaps because we have ignored the underlying violence of our existence, it has creeped its way up to the top of the social hierarchy.
Influential people have now become targets, simply because of the power they wield, so much so that De Ruyter is forced to leave the country. At least that is an option for him.
How have you come to this place where a young entertainer can be murdered in cold blood among a crowd of people?
Kiernan ‘AKA’ Forbes is only the latest in a string of assassination victims who we have been forced to bid farewell to.
Somebody didn’t like something about him and it was affordable enough to pay a conscienceless hitman to walk up to him and shoot him in the head, knowing that the likelihood of being arrested is virtually nil.
I am no longer detached from these stories and my bemusement has turned to fear.
We have allowed ourselves to become the Russia that used to disgust us!