The shocking rape of eight women by a band of heavily armed balaclava-clad men on Thursday is not only hideous, but is a serious act of extreme banditry in a country where the rule of law appears to be diminishing at an increasing pace.
The account of how these young women, who were filming a music video, were accosted by a gang of armed men who suddenly appeared from unused mines, whistling and firing guns in the air, before they ordered them to lie down and later raped them, is extremely upsetting.
As reported elsewhere in this newspaper today, we find the details of these mass rapes just too ghastly to even contemplate.
The attack sounds like a horror movie.
It reminds us of that shameful Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in 2014 in Nigeria when more than 200 helpless young women were kept in the bush where they – for many years – were forced into sex slavery, only to return home with newborn babies.
In this instance, and in a true terrorist-style attack, we are told that these brigands called “zama zamas” were dancing and celebrating like mad men before they took these helpless women – one by one – into the bush where they took turns raping them.
Some of the women were raped by up to 10 men as they cried for help.
We are told that they would bring their victims back after raping them before another group would force them back to the bush for further sexual assaults.
Under no circumstances must such terror be tolerated in and by our society.
This heinous act of hitherto unseen violence against women in this country comes at a time when tavern massacres and random street shootings are becoming the order of the day, pointing to a total breakdown of the rule of law.
While the police must be applauded for a swift operation, which saw 65 suspects arrested and two killed, the phenomenon of the so-called zama zamas (illegal miners) has long been a problem that the government has not been tackling seriously.
These zama zamas are dangerous criminals who are often engaged in brutal underground turf wars.
We’ll never know how many bodies are buried underground in some of the unused mines.
They carry dangerous weapons, including explosives, as witnessed on Thursday when they sought to repel the multi-disciplinary police task team searching for them in the wake of their heinous attack.
It is sickening that these hoodlums operate freely underground and cannot be arrested for illegal mining as the police claim there is no legislation in place to charge them.
All that can be done is to simply charge them for trespassing.
It is even absurd to hear some voices in civil society calling for the government to legalise them. That would be tantamount to legalising anarchy.
The government must not sit idly by. We urge it to restore the rule of law and act against lawlessness.
The gruesome attack on these innocent women in Krugersdorp is a serious warning sign against tolerating the illegality of these zama zamas in our midst.
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