Why no outrage?

This is not new news or a pretty subject.  This is a situation that needed addressing a long time ago.  There are areas in South Africa that are under siege by heavily armed gangsters, racked by unemployment and it's resulting poverty, debilitated by street drugs and alcohol which encourages crime for quick fixes as a way to forget.  These areas were mostly formed under the apartheid regime when people of colour were displaced from their original homes.  The majority of the people living in these areas are just normal human beings desperately trying to live their best lives.  Their days are spent hoping that there will be no gunfire, no deaths, no rapes, no abductions, no murders.  All they want is a peaceful existence. This is not the norm.  People in these areas live under constant threat of violence.  Murder is an almost daily occurrence. To make things worse, the promise of help from emergency services is virtually non-existent.  Ambulances are hi-jacked and medics robbed, police are shot dead, fire engines stoned, water pipes cut and personnel threatened.  Red zones have recently been implemented which means that the area is too dangerous to enter without police escort.  In many cases, when the police are not available, patients have to be carried some distance to reach an ambulance outside the Red zone.  When time is of the essence, this usually ends with a declaration of death instead of help.  Basic human rights are being infringed upon.  No human being should have to live like this.  I cannot even begin to imagine the stress that people live with constantly and how many are suffering from post traumatic stress disorders.  Instead of wondering what to make for supper, a wife may be thinking "Why is my 3 year old daughter missing, (Courtney was found buried after having been raped and murdered by a lodger.  She was the 19th victim of child murder in the Western Cape this year), will my husband be killed in the crossfire of warring gangsters, will my neighbour be raped on her way home, will I see another day?"  Too often children witness uncovered shot or stabbed bodies in the street.  Everyone knows at least one person who has died violently.  Stress causes illness and the incidents of heart attacks and strokes, cancers and asthma in these areas is very high.  As is the suicide rate.  I should think that the people are beyond angry, they feel invisible, afraid and uncared for by the government.  Calls for peace and prayer vigils for those innocents who have died in vain are all too common.  The people are doing what they can to remain dignified in an ugly situation, but the gangsters continue to ceaselessly de-stabilise everything.  Calls have repeatedly been made for the government to bring in the army to weed out the criminal element and help make areas safer, but our president turned that suggestion down.  Yet he called in the army to protect him.  Millions are spent on frivolous political party rallies, salaries for the ministers, their houses and their cars. Yet, people continue to live in, frankly, inhumane conditions.  When will government step up and admit they have failed miserably by allowing this torment to fester into pure hell for the people on the ground?  I felt compelled to write this because on the 1st of May 2017, in Elsie's River, Western Cape, gangsters opened fire. 13 people were shot, 4 of whom died.  (May Their Dear Souls Rest In Peace.)  This massacre did not even make the news headlines.  To my mind this is a blatant disregard for the loss of human life.  A cruel unsaid message to the people saying "Your lives don't matter enough to make the news." If this happened anywhere else in the world, it would be all over social media, television, the papers. There would be outrage.  Why is there no outrage here?  All that is heard over and over is empty promises to root out gangsterism.  I fear that the gangs have become too entrenched to be dealt with.  I fear for the people and their futures.  I hope that by putting this out there some good emerges.  I pray for a miracle.

                                                    Warning.  Graphic and sad.