28 July
Last Thursday night, or rather Friday morning at 2:10 am we are woken up by Wauzi (our dog, long story about the name, maybe I tell it one day) barking like crazy. Now Wauzie has been barking often since we got back from holiday, so we know that there are bastards roaming around our area breaking in. I get up to see if I can see anything, without any luck, but continue to watch anyway. We have a drive through driveway (not as fancy as it sounds) and Wauzi is barking at the right gate the whole time. At around 3:30am he starts running from the one gate to the next barking at both gates in turn. This usually means there is somebody right in front of the yard, but as I have been watching the whole time I knew there wasn’t anybody hiding behind the wall in front of the yard, so I was pretty confused at that stage. A short while later I see my neighbour on the left hand side climb in the car with his father and ride off towards the right, so I presume that is why Wauzi was barking there. But Wauzi continued to bark by the left gate this time. About 30 seconds later two bastards come dodging past that left gate. I open the window and shout to them in my best English to please be so kind as to leave the area and they start running down the road. I storm out phoning the police and the area security on the run.
Outside I can just glimpse them running out of sight. Shortly after that the neighbour comes hurtling around the corner in his car (they had circled the block), I point him in their direction and he speeds off to see if he can catch them. For a change the police actually pitch up soon after that and start to fine comb the veld in front of the house, etc.
The neighbour comes back up the road and we start chatting. Next minute I see something move in the bushes a few houses up (towards the right hand houses where Wauzi was originally barking), the neighbour makes a U-turn and speeds off in that direction to see if he can see anything. Neither they nor the cops find anything so we all decide that they have got away and call it a night.
Next morning Mel is on her way to take Candice to school and the neighbour three houses down (to the right) stops her and asks if it is our Golf, she answers yes. He says come look here : they had stripped his Golf down to the body. It literally looked as if it was going in for a re-spray. There was just a body and the wheels left, even the roof upholstery inside the car and window panes were gone.
So there were two groups roaming our area at the same time robbing everybody blind.
Last night (early Friday Morning again) at around 4:30am Mel wakes me up saying that Wauzi is barking again after a quite week. I jump out of bed to see the same two bastards that I had chased the week before walking past our yard. Again I open the window and shout at them in my best English to please be so kind as to leave the area and they start running, actually shouting F-you back at me in the process. Unbelievable!
Wauzi however doesn’t stop barking in the direction they ran (left gate) in so I stay awake to keep an eye out. Now I know when Wauzi’s tail stand out horizontal with the ground he can actually see who he is barking at but I couldn’t, so they were hiding just behind the wall. This continued for an hour when next minute I hear talking – here come two joggers blissfully unaware of the “stand-off” taking place, chatting away merrily.
It goes quite after that. As it is now 5:30am I just stay awake and start working.
At 7:30am Mel opens the front door to take the car out and Wauzi doesn’t come running like he normally does. Immediately she knows something is wrong and runs to call me. I get outside and immediately KNOW what has happened. The bastards had poisoned Wauzi and were waiting behind the wall for my poor dog to die so that they could break into the neighbour’s car / house / our house. I call the vet and rush him there. By this time the dog had been poisoned 3 hours ago and should have been dead already. He legs were as stiff as a gumpole and he was shivering like crazy. Out the back there was just blood coming out. I know the description is a bit graphic, but I need to tell it so that everybody can realize what monsters we are dealing with in this sick country. These are not hungry people looting for food money, they are organised criminals!
The vet immediately said that Wauzi should be dead as it normally only takes about 5 minutes for the dog to die from the poison they use – a very potent rat poison normally used used by the farmers. Apparently you can buy it freely at the taxi ranks, and not for killing rats. They put the poison, which looks like poppy seeds, into a piece of wors (sausage) or cook a stew of meat and potatoes with the poison added in. They then just toss some of this poisoned food over the wall so that the dog can eat it. The poison dissolves very quickly in the stomach and then eats up the insides of the dog and attacks the nervous system, hence the blood and shaking.
He gave Wauzi an injection to make him vomit the remaining poison out and then injected him with a stimulant to calm the shaking. There is no antidote for this poison, so after that you just hope for the best. I left Wauzi there thinking that the last memory of my best dog ever would be of him in a cage at the vet leaning against the mesh grating using his last inch of strength to stay upright while vomit was oozing out the front and blood out the back. I can honestly say that at that point I realized that South Africa is a very sick place and to say that it has gone to the dogs is an insult to the dogs that put their lives on the line every day to keep us alive in our houses.
When I got home I saw a piece of wors about 5cm long riddled with the poison lying on the grass. Wauzi had bitten it in half and swallowed both pieces whole. He obviously didn’t like it and had soon vomited it out. That is when hope started returning that he would survive his ordeal. Wauzi returned home that night, very weak, but alive. I have vowed that these criminals will never be in a position to do that again, so I now wake up at 2am every morning and stay awake until 5am as this is generally the time these bastards rape, murder and pillage after dark.
Despite the fact that we are almost about to leave South Africa, until yesterday I would still have left the country with a grain of sadness in my heart. As of today however I will leave South Africa with a sigh of relief and a good dose of , I am desperately sad to say, bitterness. Relief because we have survived this hell hole. Bitterness because the dream that was the New South Africa has become a haven for corruption, incompetence and crime, because one racist government was replaced with another, because I cannot even get a nights rest anymore in my own home.
When I climb on that plane it will be good bye and good riddance – I, and many other before and after me, could have helped to make this place the best country on earth, but you (the criminals and government) wouldn’t let us!