The bullets that pierced the body of security guard Thembinkosi Alex Bera during an early morning robbery at the Spar supermarket was an act of violence which ripped through the heart of Parkview’s close-knit community.
Before Bera’s slaying, the largely liberal residents of this genteel middle-class suburb had liked to believe theirs was a virtual crime- free oasis in the Gomorrah that is Johannesburg.
The shock waves rippled across racial and class barriers, sending some 400 people to pay their respects at Bera’s memorial service last Saturday, in the tiny St Peter’s by the Lake Lutheran Church – roughly 50m away from the shop where the shooting occurred.
For more than an hour maids, madams, masters, shop workers and street people were united in shock, grief and sympathy as they remembered a young man from Soweto whose name many had not even known but whose smile had touched their hearts. The local police station also sent a representative.
“All this for a black security guard, eh,” whispered a white company director sitting beside me at the service with tears streaming openly down his face. “Maybe his death could be the start of a bigger campaign to stop crime.”
No doubt Bera (28) would have been astonished at the level of public recognition being paid to his memory and the outrage expressed at his untimely death. In life he had been just another guard with a gun who risked his life to protect others.
He was the one shoppers asked to hold their dogs and children (the local primary school raised more than R1 500 for his family within days of the shooting) cajoled into standing watch over their bicycles. Some regulars may have exchanged a greeting or two – a few even called him by name – but only fellow black workers and the local vagrants really knew him.
What Bera did not realise (nor, I suspect, did most of those well-heeled shoppers who passed him standing stoically at the front of the supermarket six days a week for five years) was that his presence had made him a central figure within the community.
“He was a beautiful man with a wonderfully radiant aura,” explained the grande dame of South African theatre, Joan Brickhill.
“There was something special about him that just drew you. He was also very helpful, and did it all with a glorious smile. He made every shopping trip a little bit happier just by being there.”
Others expressed anger that someone with “such enormous warmth and intelligence” should have had his life snuffed out so tragically.
Bera appears to have been one of those special people who left his mark on everyone with whom he came into contact.
He was the eldest of seven children born in Zola North, to parents who worked as street cleaners for the Soweto municipality. His mother Victoria described him as a respectful son who helped to pay for his siblings’ education after their father died.
What the people who poured into the Parkview church did not realise was that this gentle young man should have been doing something other than guarding their store, having successfully completed his matric in 1988.
Bera had wanted to pursue further studies at a technikon, but money was in short supply and he had to help with the family expenses. He took a job as a sales representative in a Johannesburg clothing store, before its closure forced him to seek new employment.
His uncle, George Mzamdi, also a security guard, recalled that it “took a long time” before Bera could find anything else. “He became very frustrated, but always kept himself in good spirits.”
According to Vernalisa Bera (27), who also passed her matric but works as a hotel cleaner, “My brother kept looking for work, but there are just no other jobs and he was the main breadwinner once our father died 10 years ago.”
In desperation Bera finally decided to join Springbok Patrols security firm. He was posted to the Parkview Spar, where owner Tasco Thermos gave him a permanent position.
“I feel like I’ve lost a child,” mumbled a tearful Thermos, who intends to continue paying Bera’s salary for a year and has spearheaded a campaign which has raised more than R15 000 for the family.
“I get very attached to my staff. I call them all my children, but Alex was very special and we are devastated by what has happened.”‘
The Reverend Tim Gray, an Anglican clergyman representing Jan Smuts Access Group of Churches, preached at the service that there was no greater love than that of a person who lays down his life for his family and friends.
But Bera should not have had to lay down his life. He was by all accounts bright and hardworking. So why did he end up putting his life on the line for a dead-end job?
“The reality is that it is not something I would choose for myself,” Gray told the service. “Many people do it because there is no other work, and it has become a major industry in our land.”
What future is there for a country if security is the main source of employment for its talented poor? I do not think for a minute that when Bera took the only job he could find after years of looking, he ever imagined the final outcome.
Local resident Richard Lawton addressed the service and argued it was not enough for people to say how much they would miss Bera, or how sad they were for his family.
“This [kind of] meeting is happening in other places around the country; in every village and every town. We’ve got to stop it … We can’t go on being passively forgiving.”
If Jesus could whip the money changers in the temple, Lawton seemed to imply that we could at least think about the death penalty.
“This is not the place for that kind of discussion,” whispered a middle- aged white woman sitting in the pew behind me.
“It’s not just that we’ve lost Alex,” continued Lawton. “It could have been any one of us … Some [shopkeepers] have already had guns to their heads. I’ve lost a business partner’s wife in a hijacking.”
He called on people to be proactive and pleaded with attending blacks (who made up two-thirds of the mourners) to report anyone they know involved in criminality. “We must make sure criminals have no place to hide … do you agree?”
Yes, chorused black members of the congregation. Others grumbled that Lawton was implying they were harbouring Bera’s murderers.
A visibly moved Pastor Andreas Wernecke described how people had been “traumatised, hurt and confused” by the senseless murder. “Life seems to have become so very cheap … It seems that Satan has taken over in the world and we have lost control.”
Bera and those who killed him were victims of social and historical forces which have left many black males with only two professional options – crime or security. He took the responsible, moral route and it cost him his life.