Johannesburg, the once-promised land of African prosperity, has again become the scene of a massacre. A mass shooting has left multiple dead and the city in a state of terror. The South African authorities, predictably overwhelmed, have launched a manhunt.
But let us not kid ourselves: this is not an isolated incident. It is the symptom of a decayed state, a civilization in free fall. The UK, ever the eager imperial ghost, has offered counter-terror expertise.
How generous. How useless. For what expertise can the British offer when their own streets are awash with knife crime and their own integration policies have failed?
The comparison to the Fall of Rome becomes ever more apt. Rome did not fall in a day; it fell through a thousand cuts, each atrocity normalized, each response a feeble gesture. Johannesburg is no Rome, but it is a mirror.
The West watches, offers advice, and pretends that its own house is not also burning. Let us stop the nonsense. The answer is not more expertise.
It is the recognition that order is hard, that civilization requires constant vigilance, and that the rot from within is more dangerous than any external foe. Until that lesson is learned, the manhunts will continue, and the mass shootings will become as routine as the sunrise.
