Heard a Man Die; though I have seen Plenty.

It is now exactly a week after I sat for the CFA exams. It is 1:51 am, in the dead of the night over here and I have just been rudely woken up by shouting men and a crying man. I am usually a light sleeper and I am usually woken up even by a whisper. This was no whisper; it was a crying man and shouting men.

Seconds after I woke up, I realized what was happening. The shouting men had just caught a thief and the neighbours around here have woken up too and are now punishing this thief. It sounds brutal. I have heard them from far, but with every minute that passes, I hear them getting closer and closer.

They seem to be near the gate because the man receiving the beating is crying and I can hear the pain in his voice. It is not a scream; it is not even an all out sobbing, it is a muffled cry, as if the voice is constricted at the throat. It might be that his mouth is swollen or is filled with blood such that his voice cannot be heard properly.

I am now fully awake and I doubt that I will sleep again. That man crying like that and his incoherent attempts to beg for his life have killed any prospect of a peaceful night that I hoped for.

I can hear the kicks as they land on him. That is not a sound that I would like to hear ever again but probably will. Even from far, I can tell from the sounds of the kicks that they are heavy, the kind that have the whole body’s weight behind them. It sounds as if someone is hitting a wall with a sledge hammer. I also hear the sound of crude weapons breaking on impact with his body.

Those beating the man are increasing in number as evidenced by the increase in the noise levels. I hear Ua! (Kill!) And now I fear for the man’s life. I am now asking my bro where the nearest police station is but my bro tells me it is quite some distance away, and that only the police on patrol, if there are any near here, can save him.

My bro tells me that they will beat him properly. But that to me is naïve thinking. Though I hope it won’t happen, I know deep in my heart that this man was dead the moment he got caught. Only a stroke of luck or a woman’s pleas will save him now. On that note; yesterday, I was walking with my cousin when another alleged thief ran past us and a crowd after him. But what stuck with me about the whole thing was this lady who was telling everybody that was chasing after this guy, “if you catch him, please don’t kill him. If you catch him, please don’t kill him.”

Women seem to appreciate the sanctity of life more than men.

They have now moved some distance away, but I can still hear his muffled cries as they continue beating him. I sure sound like a coward typing away how a man is losing his life outside on the road that I use daily. But what can I do? I feel the urge to walk out there and ask them to take this guy to the cops, but that will put me at the very real risk of being killed as well as an accomplice. Not to mention it is in the dead of the night. So I sit up and type this hoping that whatever emotions that this post evokes in you will in the least get you thinking about the ills of mob justice.

My bro says again that this guy will receive the beating of his life; but this time round I tell him that this guy will not walk away from this. He is a dead man.

I hear more cries from the man, from a distance and then no more. Did I just listen in to a man lose his life? I think he is dead because he is no longer crying and I hear gates opening and closing as people get back to their homes to sleep. Will I find a dead body on the road tomorrow morning? I hope that the cops got there in time to pick up what was left of his life and not just his dead body.

And now I am torn. Between the thief who has been caught and the people who have come from their homes to beat him to death, who should I be more scared of?

I will tell you who…

I am scared of that guy next door who has gone out, helped in killing a person in the crudest of ways, talked about it with the other people in the mob, before coming back into his house, putting on the TV for some minutes and then heading on to sleep. How can taking a life seem like such a simple routine thing for people?

I will tell you if the man was killed tomorrow when the sun rises. I will now try to close my eyes and see what happens.

I wrote the above almost two weeks ago. It was in one of the folders that I am sorting out as I clean up this laptop.

The guy was not killed… I was elated when my bro told me that. The police came but they are not the ones who saved him. People just got tired or were too sleepy. They had a tire on him but for one reason or the other (no petrol) they did not burn him. But what struck me was what the police said when they got there. Word is going round that the police prefer caught thieves dead because it is less work for them hence the “why didn’t you kill him?” question when the police got there. With him dead, their only obligation would have been to take this guy to the mortuary. But now that he was barely alive, they had to take him to the hospital, wait until he gets better, re-arrest him, and then press charges against him.

I have seen plenty of men die but hearing one just jolted something in me.