conversations with a table mountain mugger - groundup article

[Shebeen]

 

 

In the fishing community of Hangberg, below the westernmost kink of the Cape Peninsula’s crooked spine, lives a man who has, by his reckoning, mugged more than forty hikers and mountain cyclists in the last eight years. 

 

http://www.groundup.news/article/table-mountains-easy-targets-trail-hout-bay-mugger/

 

This is quite a read, and I suppose easy targets is the obvious part - the social issues are what drives the need.

[dirtypot]

http://www.groundup.news/article/table-mountains-easy-targets-trail-hout-bay-mugger/

 

This is quite a read, and I suppose easy targets is the obvious part - the social issues are what drives the need.

 

Interesting article.  Leaves me with a few questions...

[Allrounder]

mmmm

[nonky]

Norton is a piece of excrement that we're unfortunate to have to share this planet with.

 

The world would be a much better place without Norton and it's a pity that there is no way to rid ourselves of his malevolent presence.

[NickGM]

This country really did F itself in the A with things like the group areas act and apartheid. 

[Serious Panda]

This country really did F itself in the A with things like the group areas act and apartheid. 

 

Malema mentality where everything is the white mans fault.

[Skubarra]

Norton is a piece of excrement that we're unfortunate to have to share this planet with.

 

The world would be a much better place without Norton and it's a pity that there is no way to rid ourselves of his malevolent presence.

 

Yes, but he seems to be very much a product of dire circumstances that continue to produce a number of "Nortons" rather than a one-off bad apple.

 

Scary story...

[Moriarty]

Yes, but he seems to be very much a product of dire circumstances that continue to produce a number of "Nortons" rather than a one-off bad apple.

 

Scary story...

There are many countries on the planet that are a lot worse off than SA in terms of "dire circumstances", I have been to a few of them and travelled rough using public transport and rubbing shoulders with the people on the bottom rungs of society, they do not have scum like norton, IMHO.

[Serious Panda]

Yes, but he seems to be very much a product of dire circumstances that continue to produce a number of "Nortons" rather than a one-off bad apple.

 

Scary story...

 

"A product of dire circumstances" is nonsense he chose to be a criminal and there is nothing more to it.

[cfcjim]

There are many countries on the planet that are a lot worse off than SA in terms of "dire circumstances", I have been to a few of them and travelled rough using public transport and rubbing shoulders with the people on the bottom rungs of society, they do not have scum like norton, IMHO.

Yeah they do, you just didn't meet them.

[Skubarra]

"A product of dire circumstances" is nonsense he chose to be a criminal and there is nothing more to it.

 

Yes why on earth would someone growing up in a poor violent community with a gangster for a father and a druggie for a mother also fall into the same life of drugs & crime with all the golden opportunities available to him to lift him out of poverty? 

 

Next you'll tell me he should have just been less lazy and worked harder then none of this nonsense would have happened?

['Dale]

Yes why on earth would someone growing up in a poor violent community with a gangster for a father and a druggie for a mother also fall into the same life of drugs & crime with all the golden opportunities available to him to lift him out of poverty?

 

Next you'll tell me he should have just been less lazy and worked harder then none of this nonsense would have happened?

Like x 1000000000 ☝????️☝????️☝????️

[nonky]

Yes, but he seems to be very much a product of dire circumstances that continue to produce a number of "Nortons" rather than a one-off bad apple.

 

Scary story...

 

 

Yes why on earth would someone growing up in a poor violent community with a gangster for a father and a druggie for a mother also fall into the same life of drugs & crime with all the golden opportunities available to him to lift him out of poverty? 

 

Next you'll tell me he should have just been less lazy and worked harder then none of this nonsense would have happened?

 

Yip, tell that to my brother who ended up in hospital with multiple stab and trauma wounds after protecting his partner and young girl children from two "Nortons" whom he found perusing his personal belongings one evening inside his home.

 

Shame, poor guys.  

 

Your sympathy is misplaced.

[V12man]

They should prosecute the journalist for not reporting him and his whereabouts as the law requires - guilty is guilty for both of them...

[Mamil]

As horrific as these crimes are and as ghastly as it is to have endured them, until we realise that there is a connection between the fact that we are riding bikes that it costs more year on year to own and maintain than the huge majority of famllies have to feed, clothe and educate their children and then use that awareness to equip ourselves with ideologies and mechanisms to do something about that massive discrepancy, these crimes will continue.

 

It astonishes me that we privileged mountain bikers arrive at these rural locations for rides, are ushered around the course on our bikes, each of which costs more than the farm labourer marshalls might earn in that year and are apparently oblivious to the absurdity of our entitlement.

 

Yes I work work and no doubt so do you but it isn't hard work that separates me in my 250 grand car and my 40 grand bike and 3 grand of cycling clothes and my 1 grand camelback and the new bontragers at 1400 a set on the wheels - it is an accident of birth.

 

Misplaced sympathy - I feel sympathy for us all - for Norton, the psychopath that our society made, for myself and all that I've lost and dealt with in terms of crime against me, for all of us.

 

It's a horror story what's happening to us and I wish we could stop it.

[eddy]

I read this yesterday and this statistic put it into perspective:

 

"More than 50 mugging incidents, involving more than 80 victims, have been recorded in the area between Hangberg and Sandy Bay since October 2008 the most anywhere on the peninsula ..........during the same period, more than 2,000 people were murdered in Nyanga"

 

I have nothing to add.