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Someone Was Stabbed On the Way Back Home

Added 2025-03-31 06:09:58 +0000 UTC

In early 2019, someone was stabbed on my train back home. We were scared of missing the train when it set off again, so we stayed in our carriage while the security team tried to find the muggers. We had a schedule, dammit, and it involved arriving home in time for lunch, even if there was someone with a knife a few carriages away. We stood. We waited. We grew increasingly bored because this was just another ordinary day in Cape Town, The Friendly City.

Violence has a way of settling into your bones, and nobody has the luxury for that, so we checked the time on our phones. We complained about small inconveniences. We didn’t wonder if the victim was okay. There was no victim. You can believe anything if you work at it long enough.

I didn’t check the news the next day. Stabbings on trains are too commonplace to make the papers most days, and I’m too busy thinking about the trip to the wetlands that I will take this morning.

A few months ago, street cameras recorded a woman being assaulted on a busy road a few blocks from my house. Cars passed and passed. The woman fought. Drivers ignored her. They tell us not to be heroes, but we still celebrate the teenaged girl who was killed last month for interfering in a stranger’s mugging after school.

They say there’s a right and intelligent way to respond to violence: Pass. On. By.

Run if you can.

Yesterday, someone was stabbed on my train back home, but we didn’t run. We didn’t interfere. We complained that lunch time was passing us by. We stood. We waited. We laughed until no one was stabbed on our train back home.