Another Priest Murdered
The death of Fr Louis Blondel brings to four the number of Catholic priests murdered in South Africa in the past 12 months. The figure suggests that as a group clergy are, like the police, particularly at risk from violence. Fr Bourgeois, who witnessed the killing of Fr Blondel in the Diepsloot presbytery on the night of Sunday/Monday last is reported as saying that he had been hijacked five times.
The risk of violence goes with the territory of the particular pastoral ministry. Some of those territories are more dangerous than others and one can only salute a person like Fr Blondel who at the age of 70 was still hard at work in the informal settlements of Gauteng. Part of the shock we feel is that it is so often the men and women who are dedicated to the community who are targeted. Many felt the same sentiment when a young social worker working for an NGO in Alexandra was killed in a botched hijacking.
Can it indeed be true that 'no good deed ever goes unpunished'? We do not like to think so. Or that there are thugs who prefer the soft target of priests or religious who live vulnerably within the community. The sad fact is that it is precisely the soft target that attracts these moral dysfunctionals.
Fr Blondel's life was apparently casually snuffed out for a few Rands and a couple of computers and here lies the another grim South African mystery – how it can happen that a life can be bartered for a vehicle, a television set or even a cellphone? And further how can the young desperadoes involved in such acts be so careless with their own lives which must realise will surely either end in a long prison sentence or on the street in a shootout with police?
Drugs and alcohol undoubtedly play their part, but there appears to be an underlying suicidal mentality which is displayed in so many areas of South African life – the reckless sexual behaviour of multiple partners, the anarchic behaviour on the roads of motorists and pedestrians and the mindless rush to violence to solve problems.
The Government has recently issued figures showing that the murder rate has declined by 30% since 1994. Researcher Kerwin Lebone said the 25,965 the people murdered in 1994-95 had gone down to 18,148 murders in 2008-09. Obviously the rate hadn't fallen enough for Fr Louis Blondel and the thousands of others killed since the advent of democracy.
Those of us who remember the orgy of violence through which the old regime forced the country in the final bloody struggle for political freedom, were realistic enough about the trauma of the past to understand that a brutalised society would take a long time to find internal peace. However many of us underestimated the power of history's aftershocks – perhaps the greatest of which has been the continuing malign and sinister influence of Bantu Education.
Clearly there is a very long way still to go and it is easy to become discouraged. But a man like Fr Blondel would not want us to throw up our hands in horror and despair at his terrible demise. He would hope that we hold steadfastly to the task of re-weaving the moral and spiritual fibre of our shredded nation.
