In the glorious settings of my childhood, I feel danger and death encroaching.
From the main road of Kalk Bay, the pretty town between Fish Hoek and Muizenberg, if you look at the mountain, you will see a neck between Trappieskop on the left and Cave Peak on the right. A path goes over it and down into Clovelly on the other side. At the top of the path you can turn right up to Cave Peak, full of interesting and convoluted caves. I spent much of my Fish Hoek childhood walking that path and exploring those caves.
On Thursday morning last week, Henri la Cour, a pillar of the Fish Hoek community, 72 years old, walked up this path with a lady friend. He stopped to rest in one of those lovely, shaded nooks next to it. A man with a knife stabbed him in the heart and killed him. The friend, her wedding ring ripped off her finger, managed to escape down the mountain and call people to retrieve Henri’s corpse.
As schoolboys in Fish Hoek in the 1950s and 1960s, we roamed the mountains in complete safety. No more. Now I’d advise schoolboys to stay at home and play computer games instead.
We cycled to Kommetjie regularly. No more. I have been recently mugged on my bicycle on this road.
We even cycled through the Cape Flats to Gordon’s Bay and Kleinmond. No more.
We used the train from Simon’s Town to Cape Town at all hours. No more. People have been robbed and killed on these trains.
Nowadays I’d advise nobody to use them except in the rush hour.
A Fish Hoek mother, with two big strong sons, refuses to let them take the train to their Rondebosch school.
On the slopes of Table Mountain, Devil’s Peak and Signal Hill, on the beaches of Muizenberg, Noordhoek, Kommetjie and Sandy Bay, killers, thieves and rapists lurk. Anyone venturing into these places except in a large party, preferably armed, is risking assault, robbery and death.
South Africa’s tourist managers must stop lying to foreigners that South Africa is a safe country to visit. It isn’t. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world and even its places of scenic beauty are filled with peril.
Fish Hoek is in mourning.
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Article source: http://citizen.co.za/203212/murder-on-the-mountain/
