There has been the usual response to the crime statistics this week. They are bad. We live in a very dangerous society, one in which we are still brushing up the broken glass and detritus of the most recent outbreak of xenophobic violence.
What is even more worrying is that the statistics only reflect reported crimes; there are far more - especially crimes that are sexual in nature - that never get reported.
But there is one entry that is totally, unutterably horrifying - and should chill all of us.
We lynched 786 people in this country between 2018 and 2019 - three times more, according to website PoliticsWeb, than the US (the traditional home of lynching) did at its worst period in 1892.
Our police don’t call them lynchings any more than we describe xenophobia as racism; instead, the police record them as mob justice/vigilantism murders. Whatever you term them, what they represent is unequivocal - a lack of faith in the existing law enforcement and justice system to bring the guilty to book and exact a fitting retribution.
It is an extremely worrying statistic, one that shows how close to the edge we are beginning to teeter yet again. We dare not normalise it, as we do with so much other unpleasantness. It is not normal to live in fear, it is not normal to exist in a state of perpetual alertness preparing for some catastrophic violence against yourself. It is not normal to have to barricade yourself into your house at night - or fret for the safety of your loved ones while you are away.
Yesterday, women - and some men - symbolically staged a sit-in at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to protest against gender-based violence. Perhaps next week they should do it all over again, this time joined by the rest of us, at the Union Buildings, because that’s where the real answer lies.