Seven-year-old Zubair Jacobs was playing with friends outside his home in Mitchells Plain when gangsters shot and killed him last week.
On the same day, a 20-year-old man was shot dead in Eastridge in gang violence.
A few days earlier, 12-year-old Kelly-Amber Koopman was sitting with friends in Wesbank, Delft, when she was shot in the head by gunmen and died.
State witness Sicelubuhle Moyo and her husband, Wilfred Dube, were assassinated last week on their way to the Randburg Magistrate's Court, where Moyo was scheduled to testify against four police officers for torturing her.
A mineworker from Westonaria, Johannesburg, was stabbed to death last week by a colleague, who cut open his stomach.
Two weeks ago, retired electrician Lindsay Humm, 60, was axed to death in his house in Gqeberha next to a church.
Last month, Lucasta Plaatjies, 23, was shot dead on her way home from a wedding in Gqeberha. She was pregnant.
Megan Griesel, 20, was shot dead when she drove past a business robbery in Lydenburg, Mpumalanga, last month.
These nine names will be forgotten when Police Minister Bheki Cele releases the crime statistics for 2023/24 next year.
Cele will claim the police are winning the war against crime and boast about his shoot-to-kill policy.
There will be no marches or fiery speeches by ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, like the one he made on Saturday in Cape Town during a pro-Palestinian demonstration that saw tens of thousands of Capetonians wave the Palestine flag, brandishing anti-Israel posters.
If there wasn't an election next year, and the ANC wasn't languishing in support in the Western Cape, Mbalula would be nowhere to be seen.
There was nothing wrong with Saturday's march, and it is the constitutional right of every South African to protest peacefully for or against any cause.
It is regretful pro-Israeli protesters weren't allowed to march for their cause on Sunday in Sea Point peacefully.
I completely get why the violence in the Middle East so viscerally moves people that they take to the streets, even though they are physically removed thousands of kilometres from the carnage.
What I don't understand is the failure of us as South Africans - myself included - to be so enraged by the daily killing of our brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts to take to the streets similarly and say, "no more".
I am afraid we have become so accustomed to our obscene crime rate of 74 murders per day we have lost the ability to become angry when we read about the stories I listed above.
Have we become numb to the slaughters happening around us?
What is happening in Gaza is atrocious; why can't we express the same anger at the innocent 27 000 lives that are taken annually in our own neighbourhoods and streets?
I only listed nine names above of murder victims over the past month.
In that period, more than 2 200 more people were murdered in South Africa.
Every human life is sacred, and numbers don't diminish the pain, but this is 1 000 more than the number of innocent civilians butchered by Hamas on 7 October.
Despite our differences of opinion and beliefs, South Africans have repeatedly shown we can unite against a common enemy.
I doubt there will be any peace-loving citizens who are not willing to take a stand against the butchering of our friends and family members in war zones all around us.
It is as clear as daylight that our politicians and the police have failed to protect us from the scourge of organised crime plaguing our land.
It is time that we stand up, like we do for Palestine and Israel, against the war on our doorsteps.
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