Dawn deaths and devil worship

At dawn this morning I found myself alongside CutePhotographer standing near two dead bodies splayed across the backyards of two units in an upmarket estate in Bloubosrand. Yet another tribute to our Safety and Security Minister's shoot to kill fever that seems to have gripped our cops.
It's a weird experience to stand next to yet another dead body and see people from the complex driving past and cheering or expressing some kind of joyful reaction at seeing the end result of the mega shootout that ripped through their home territory during the early hours.
A guy from the body corporate came sauntering through with his little girl as forensic investigators busied themselves on the scene taking fingerprints off the corpses and whatever else they do with dead guys.
"Poppet, don't go there," he chided as his off-spring toddled off into cordoned-off territory. She wandered back and to hide behind daddy's legs as a friendly detective gave her a strip of plastic crime-scene cordon to play with. She waved it happily like a flag.
A woman came outside in her pyjamas to take pictures of the crime-scene action outside her house, commented that the shootout had caused the complex to sound like Beirut overnight and she wanted to send proof to her relatives abroad. She wants to move to Australia.
A pretty young woman stopped as she tried to drive past. She started laughing when she saw the bodies, clamped her hand over her mouth in shock and quickly apologised for giggling because people had died. But their deaths made her feel safe, even though she had sold her home and would be moving out soon anyway.
It was a bizarre morning and quite something to realise how angry and crime-rattled Jozi people are. And how fed-up they are with the armed robberies and hits plaguing the suburbs.
But no time to waste - I had to move on to the Joburg High Court for the continuing pre-sentencing hearing of the schoolboy convicted of killing another boy with a ninja-sword and hacking three other people.
Today it was the turn of South Africa's Satanism expert Dr Kobus Jonker to testify about the boy's possible involvement in the dark world of devil worshippers.
Nope - it seems the kid had just been dabbling in the occult and got his satanism backwards, picked up junk off the internet and mixed it up with pagan practices.
"Donker Jonker" - as he was known when he headed the cop's Occult Related Crimes Unit before it got shut down after human rights activists pointed out that our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion - pointed out that young Morne Harmse failed the grade when it came to ... well ... good Satanic practices.
Commenting on photos of the teenager's bedroom he pointed out that there was no altar to speak of, and the blood smears on the walls that are generally evident when one makes pacts with the devil were sadly lacking. His posters were more in line with eastern religions than demonic and the home made ouija board hidden under his bed was marked with pink and white wax, which showed his ignorance as true Satanists use only black and red candles apparently - with the black summoning up the forces of darkness and the red calling on the energies of blood. Even the witch script on his diary was unrecognisable.
So ja - it seems that poor Morne failed even in his efforts to be a really evil boy.