Yes! It was on a bright crisp night, with the moon full, when the scumbags who ruined the perfect life of the Ngcobo’s struck. It was precisely twenty-seven minutes after eight on the evening of Monday the 26th of April 2010.

The Ngcobo’s were lazily seated in their stylish, up-market sitting room in the suburbs of Houghton, 2nd Avenue, watching their, or more appropriately, South Africa’s, most loved and watched soapie, Generations, on SABC One. At that juncture, SABC was showing a Pep Store advert, when the beasts, masquerading as human beings, invaded the privacy of the Ngcobo’s and reigned in terror. Terror that set various events in the hitherto peaceful household of the Ngcobo’s in motion.

The events, which the said affluent family had until then refused, or had no reason, to believe could ever occur to their close-knit, loving family, were now a reality. What a tragic evening it was turning out to be.

The Ngcobo’s were inside, behind locked, bolted, and chained doors. The criminals were supposed to all be outside, prowling around, looking for easy prey that they could devour. What is very pathetic and extremely sad is that the vultures of the sad, fateful day were mere kids, if they can be called that (which, based on their behaviour, is debatable).

It still remains one of those mysteries that linger on for a very long, sad time as to how the scoundrels gained entry to the well-secured, state-of-the-art house without being detected by the so-called state-of-the-art security that the hard working and peace loving, honourable Mr. Ngcobo had put in place. That’s the kind of security he had installed to protect his family that he adored so dearly, and to merely say that he adored his family would be an understatement of the century.

Nevertheless, it’s imperative to note that Mr. Ngcobo had gone to such extreme lengths in putting such high security measures in place not due to the fact that he had a subconscious premonition that such a nasty thing could ever happen to his family, but because it was part of the décor and normal to do so in a crime-infested place like our beloved (read crime-ridden) South Africa.

Having gained entry, or more precisely beaten the high-tech security system, the three teenage boys announced their uninvited and unwelcome presence in the sitting room where all the Ngcobos were seated, watching television. The family’s helpers, the maid and gardener, saw and heard nothing since they were both in their cottages.

Call it luck that the Ngcobo’s were together, but I wouldn’t call it that, for I believe that luck is when thorough preparation meets opportunity. The three intruders emerged into a living room that was as large as their houses and very plush; they couldn’t take it all in at once, although with one sweeping glance they all had the impression of money and more money.

The house was very fancy; French windows, original paintings, leather, glass, chrome, ankle-deep Persian rugs, concealed lighting, and crystal ornaments that only the loaded members of the community could afford. To these three thugs this was exactly what they saw in the movies in their thirty-seven inch, black and white televisions back in their homes. But the most surprising thing to them, although quite in character for the house, was the largest television set that they had ever seen – a really enormous screen.

The whole family was shell-shocked to see what at prima facie appeared to be some scruffy boys brandishing guns before their eyes, unimaginable in what they had known to be their well-secured home. It took the whole family something more than a fraction of a second to register in their minds that they were face-to-face with criminals of the worst kind.

The sound of a gun being cocked usually sends shivers down the spines of people, irrespective of their character, and it’s no surprise that when the intruders said “voetsek shut up,” the family instantaneously went cold. Call it the element of surprise or whatever you wish to call it, but it’s a known fact that catastrophe rarely registers instantaneously, and this is what transpired with the Ngcobo’s. As a result, none of them could move or produce any sound. No one answered, but instead looked from one face to another in bewilderment.

In short, the whole family was bamboozled, petrified, and flabbergasted simultaneously. Jabulani and Jennifer’s kids looked at their father, and Jennifer looked to her husband for any cues but, to their disappointment, none came, simply because he was as confused as they were. Except for the sound of the vivacious Queen Moroka on the television set, who had no idea what the hell was going on at the Ngcobo’s, the silence that followed could be sliced with a knife.

This unexpected silence from the Ngcobo’s almost led the “thugs” (that is the three boys) to a hysterical, stupid madness. It could be argued that the young men, if I can call them that, had nerves of steel because it should take more than the most ruthless thug to brandish their gun at such a harmless, glorious, and fantastic family. One wouldn’t need to have a considerable amount of wisdom to detect that Mr. Ngcobo, the paterfamilias, could hardly harm even a fly, never mind a human being.

Imagine this fiasco occurring on the eve of the sixteenth anniversary of a free South Africa; a free South Africa that was attained with sacrifices that would take me a year of Sundays, if ever I endeavoured, to elaborate upon them. This was five years, eleven months, two weeks and five days since South Africa had won the bid to host the historic FIFA world cup, the very first on African soil and most probably the very last in our life time.

This was a time when all peoples of the rainbow nation were to join hands in celebrating such a glorious human achievement. It was exactly forty-six days to kick off: the kick off of the 2010 FIFA world cup, for crying out loud. For those in the dark, this is football’s most prestigious and magnetic sporting event.

Believe you me, everyone who knows their soccer and even those just going with the flow were in the spirit of the world cup, and hence it defies logic to comprehend how such young kids, now turned thugs, conceived of such heinous acts. Acts that human beings should have abandoned with the creation of bulbs or even a few centuries before Mugabe came into power. But what can one say? After all, a human mind is a marvelous thing, where all the good and the ugly are conceived.

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