Times Of Swaziland: HAPPY SLAPPING CONTROVERSY

HAPPY SLAPPING CONTROVERSY
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Bandiswa Vilane on 20/12/2024 09:04:00


A few nights ago, we witnessed in real time the end of a woman’s life on
social media. We saw this through a confession video that was posted by the
husband, Sibusiso Ntaka, who is the brutal murderer of the victim.
This is a serious concern, as happy slapping has trended greatly in the last few
years. Happy slapping is a violent crime trend, where people record themselves
attacking others and post the videos online for entertainment and attention.
Committing such heinous crimes as murder is unthinkable to most of us. But
it’s almost equally mind-boggling that the perpetrators would then confess or
even brag about such acts on the internet. I am worried, though: Is Facebook
becoming a place where people mistakenly think they can literally get away with
murder?
There are some popular cases that have occurred in South Africa, but some of the
first ones that gave way to these happened a few years ago:
*In September 2012, a 15-year-old Dutch boy was sentenced to a year in juvenile
detention and up to three years in a psychiatric institution after he confessed
to killing a schoolgirl, whose Facebook posts reportedly led to a €1 000
contract for her murder.  	*In March 2012, in the Dominican Republic, a
24-year-old man asked his 25-year-old ex-girlfriend to meet him at a motel,
where he shot her and then himself after seeing a picture of her with another
man on Facebook. Relatives said they had been together for three years before
breaking up about a month before the tragedy.  	*In Tennessee, at the end of
January 2012, a 60-year-old father of a woman conspired with a 38-year-old man,
who had romantic feelings for the woman, to murder the couple who had unfriended
the woman on Facebook.  	*Harassing comments had been made on Facebook before
the couple, a 36-year-old man and his 23-year-old girlfriend, were found dead.
Their eight-month-old baby was found unharmed. The wife of one accused man was
charged with evidence tampering in September 2012.
Witnessed
As you can see from the examples I have given, the use of Facebook to post these
acts cuts across all ages. It is not just young couples or the older generation;
it’s a mixture of age groups. Since then, we’ve witnessed countless gruesome
videos taken by people witnessing murders. I think that’s another phenomenon
we need to look into—how people would rather take videos of the murder taking
place instead of doing everything in their power to help the victim. The first
example that comes to mind is the recent case of a woman who was murdered on
campus in KZN, with people peeping through windows and taking pictures and
videos instead of helping.
The woman died right there after trying to escape; she was overpowered and lost
her fighting strength while her boyfriend hacked her to death. The taking of the
videos and sharing them on Facebook exemplifies the growing truth about social
media: to some, nothing is too sacred, private or damning to share online. With
the increased attention being paid to cyberbullying these days, is there a
connection between online bullying and violent behaviours such as murder?
Because online bullies don’t need to be physically strong or able to control
others in the real world, is Facebook becoming a vehicle for aggressive
behaviour?
Displays
Looking at the Sibusiso Lawrence story, for example, his Facebook history
displays many questionable behaviours; some of his innermost thoughts are red
flags and should have indicated what he was capable of a long time ago, with
some of his posts dating back to 2014. When people committed crimes before,
they’d hide and try to conceal evidence. But now it’s as if they expose
themselves.
I believe the new aspect now is that when people did very dangerous and
aggressive things to others in the past, they didn’t have the medium with
which they could share the information. There is that aspect associated with
aggressive crime that we’ve always seen. What social media has done is give
people with those propensities a whole new platform. The good news about
people’s need for attention and using social media is that the compulsion to
brag about getting away with these activities increases the probability of
getting caught. Without social media, it would have been much harder to find the
culprits, much less prosecute them. So, as much as it comes with a lot of
questions, it also helps to bring perpetrators to justice and assists victims in
escalating efforts to find justice.