The sun, that jaundiced eye of the African sky, has witnessed yet another atrocity: a mass shooting in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Eleven souls, extinguished like candles in a windstorm. The police, that beleaguered army of underpaid heroes, are now scouring the veld for the perpetrators.
But let us not be coy about the subtext here. This is not merely a local tragedy; it is a tremor felt in the mahogany-panelled boardrooms of London. British mining firms, those tentacled behemoths that have long since burrowed into the earth's crust, are on high alert.
Why? Because where blood pools on the ground, capital grows nervous. The narrative is as predictable as a gin-joint habit: violence in the former colonies, a flurry of trade delegation cancellations, then an urgent board meeting to discuss 'operational security'.
The stock market, that grand barometer of human misery, will twitch and tremble. Shares in Anglo American and Glencore will dip, then recover, then dip again, as if performing a macabre dance to the tune of catastrophe. Meanwhile, the real story lies in the dust of a township.
The real story is eleven empty chairs, eleven grieving families, and a justice system that staggers under the weight of its own inadequacy. The police, God love them, are pursuing leads. But leads are gossamer threads in a labyrinth of impunity.
The manhunt continues, as it must. For the dignity of the dead, for the sanity of the living. But do not hold your breath.
The machine of state response will grind slowly, if at all. And in the meantime, the gin will flow, the shares will trade, and the world will scroll past this headline on to the next. So raise a glass to the fallen, if you can.
It is all any of us can do, is it not?
