South Africa Jeremy Gordin murder: Journalist had warned kids to leave ‘falling apart’ country

Journalist and author Jeremy Gordin was killed at his home in Parkview, Johannesburg last week. Photo / Supplied

Police are working “intensely” to find those responsible for the murder of a prominent South African journalist who was killed during a burglary at his home in Johannesburg.

Jeremy Gordin’s death has highlighted the country’s growing security problems and comes just months after the writer published an emotional letter warning his two grown children to emigrate because things were “falling apart”.

Police said parts of the house were splattered with the journalist’s blood and that his body had been covered. They have yet to reveal the cause of death but hinted Gordin was stabbed.

Gordin’s Mercedes Benz and a television were also stolen from his property.

He was alone when he was killed last week while his wife, Deborah, also a journalist, and their two adult children were in Cape Town on holiday.

Unlike other houses in the leafy Johannesburg suburb of Parkview, many of which boast electric fences and tall walls, the Gordin family home had little security.

The writer’s sister travelled from London to join a large gathering of mourners for his burial in a Jewish cemetery in western Johannesburg on Wednesday.

Last year after a burglary in his home, Gordin wrote a column for Politicsweb, in which he urged his two children, both aged in their 20s, to leave South Africa.

He accused the ruling African National Congress of misrule and expressed concern about ongoing electricity cuts, which sometimes impact water supplies.

“There comes a time when things are clearly falling apart and there comes a time when the general moronicism, greed and lack of care grow really annoying,” Gordin wrote in a piece entitled ‘A letter to my children’.

“And you, who have your whole lives before you (as they say), need to consider seriously going to live elsewhere. We’ve been doing it for centuries, after all.”

Murder suburb ‘very safe’

It comes as estate agents report a boom in property sales in the more wealthy suburbs of South Africa, particularly among white residents.

“One reason they give for leaving is crime,” said an agent operating in northern Johannesburg, who asked not to be identified. “Prices are dropping which is tough for the seller and for us,” she added.

However it is unusual for white people to be murdered in South Africa, according to Gareth Newham, Head of Justice and Violence Prevention at the Institute for Security Studies.

“If you are a white male you are three times more likely to commit suicide than be killed by a stranger,” he said.

Crime statistics show that Parkview, where Gordin was murdered, is a “very safe suburb…when murders do take place it is more likely to be for domestic reasons,” Newham added.

“Alcohol is a massive contributor to our violent crime rate,” he said.

South Africans endured extreme lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic in which alcohol sales were banned for more than 18 months, leading to crime rates plummeting.

There had been a massive drop in crime for nearly two decades after the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, but it began rising three years after disgraced former president Jacob Zuma was elected to power in 2009.

Gordin wrote a book about Zuma a year before he was sworn into office, but there have been no suggestions his murder was connected in any way to that work.

Latest statistics, released earlier this year from the South African Police Service, covering October to December 2022, show that 74 people were murdered every day, a 10 per cent year-on-year increase.

Nearly half of those murdered were killed with a firearm.