Tag: limpopo

I give up

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There have been many comments made this week over just how terribly depressing the news in general has been recently. And while people are killing each other all over the world, mainly (but not exclusively) in the name of religion, I’ve managed to mentally put these horrible events onto the back burner and get on with my life.

But this more local story about three farmworkers getting into an argument and two of them allegedly killing the other by throwing oranges at him has brought the futility of my trying to ignore depressing news to the fore:

Two men have been arrested after they allegedly assaulted a farmworker with oranges until he died on a farm outside Tzaneen, Limpopo police said on Wednesday.
The men, aged 27 and 30, were taken into custody on Tuesday, said Lt-Col Moatshe Ngoepe.
“Babanto Chauke, 38, and two men had a quarrel, the two [allegedly] started throwing loose oranges at him until he died.” The men were Chauke’s colleagues at Lakota Farm. They would appear in the Tzaneen Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, Ngoepe said.

How cheap is human life? How bad does any argument have to be for you to kill a man? To kill him by throwing fruit at him? How long does that even take?

For me, this is every bit as depressing as Iraq, Nigeria or Gaza. And equally stupid.

UPDATE: Paul Scott (see comment below) also shares this:

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Swimming Pool Hippo Is Dead

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Just for the sake of completeness, and somewhat belatedly (I’ve been busy doing life), a quick update on the state of the hippo which got stranded in a swimming pool in Nylstroom.
Actually, the title of the post may have rather given the game away already.

The hippo is dead.

“Solly” was doomed as soon as people got all soppy over his plight and gave him a name, thus immediately humanising him and making it far more emotionally draining for all concerned when he popped his clogs. Questions have to be asked as to whether he would have survived if the vet hired to tranquilise him hadn’t arrived four hours late, but they won’t be asked, because we have far more important questions to be asked.

Questions like:

Who on earth is going to go and stay at the Monate Game Lodge near Modimolle, when their pool looks like this?

(and I’m not talking about the 1 ton of Hippopotamus amphibius therein.)

Fortunately, due to draconian export legislation, we have a surfeit of swimming pool cleaning apparatus here in South Africa and I’m quite sure they will constantly get stuck in one corner clean all that hippo crap out in no time at all.