Man killed for watching World Cup instead of a Gospel Show

[Serafina]

IF you are correct (which is, at this point, more or less pure speculation and extrapolation, altough reasonable), then this guys behaviour can be described "assholish" - regardless of the programm.
However, that does NOT justify any violence on anyones part. Letting something as trivial as television escalate into violence (or even a verbal fight) just shows terrible people skills on everyones part involved in this.
Stating that "he had it coming" implies that what he did justifies such a response. This is simply not the case - such a problem should and can be solved by non-violent means easily.

Your original and follow-up statement seem to justify domestic violence. I think you did not want to imply that, but that is nevertheless how it can easily be understood.

[Oskuro]

Awesome to see people supporting violent outburts from trivial matters. Specially among family who, you know, should work out these issues.

If your coworkers are assholes, you can just walk away and ignore them. If it is your friends who continually trample you, you can tell them, or even consider if it is worth it to keep being friends with them. If it is your flat-mates with whom you share rent, schedules can be made and solutions worked out. If it is your family/significant other, things need to be talked out and resolved, and agreements made. There are many options, and all of them can be enacted as soon as a problem is perceived, instead of waiting until repeated instances of the problem cause resentment.

I second the idea that there was probably more going on with that family than we know. If it had been just the wife or one of the "kids" having an outburst, it might have been an obvious case of a person being violently idiotic about TV (you know, the notion a few posters here seem to support), but it was a group response, they all rose up in anger and attacked the man, that looks more like there was some bottled up tension there.

[Stuart]

However, that does NOT justify any violence on anyones part. Letting something as trivial as television escalate into violence (or even a verbal fight) just shows terrible people skills on everyones part involved in this.

That is more or less my point. Living in a family demands the development of people skills and this family obviously didn't have them. There was a situation where one person wanted to watch one thing and the other three people wanted to watch something else. The "people skill" solution is obvious; the three people who want to watch something get to watch it and the other person goes down to a sports bar or whatever.

Stating that "he had it coming" implies that what he did justifies such a response. This is simply not the case - such a problem should and can be solved by non-violent means easily.

In an ideal world I would agree with you. The problem lies in an old saying "it takes two people to end a fight but only one to start it". It is overwhelmingly likely that this was not an isolated instance but the culmination of a long-established pattern in which the victim had exploited the "non-violent" ethic to run roughshod over the rest of the family. Eventually the family snapped; sorry to repeat myself but if somebody pushes hard enough, long enough, his victims will eventually push back and when they do, the person who does the initial pushing has to bear a large proportion of the blame for what happens. The law even has a term for that circumstance; "circumstances in mitigation". Also, there is no indication as yet that this was anything other than an accident. How could that happen? Easy. Man gets up to change the channel manually, son grabs him around the waist to pull him away, they fall over and the man's head slams into the wall with the weight of both men behind it. That's a perfectly plausible scenario and one the fits the facts as given. It also means there was a much lower level of violence involved than suggested. Rather than an attack that led to the man essentially being beaten to death, there was a tussel that had a tragically unfortunate outcome. The fact that the daughter walked on minimal bail suggests that the police theory runs something along those lines.

Your original and follow-up statement seem to justify domestic violence. I think you did not want to imply that, but that is nevertheless how it can easily be understood.

This is actually a significant problem in that trying to understand the circumstances behind an event all too frequently gets misunderstood as an attempt to justify an event. Here, I would suggest there were several key factors behind the event. An overbearing family member who demands his personal wishes override those of the rest of the family. Frustration at the repetition of that behavior over a period of many years. Probable other events that were creating stress and tension in the family. Poor people skills all around. An inability for people to remove themselves from the area of conflict (which is always the best way to resolve such things. Just walk away.) Suggesting that the fact the alternative to the football match was a gospel program was the primary cause of the violence seems to me to be comopletely unjustified.

Nobody can or should justify domestic violence. However, understanding why it takes place and trying to estimate whose contributed what to the final denoument is a key factor in trying to make sure it doesn't happen. Understanding is not justifying. If sports fanatics understood just how frustrating their obsession is for people to whom televised sports is boring nonsense, they might be a little less aggressive in trying to enforce their wishes on others - and that would act to decrease domestic violence not incite it.

The drinking point is an extremely good and valid one. If one or more participants were sozzled, their judgement would be badly imapired and would make an explosion like this all the more likely. Their motor control would also be impaired enough to make an accident of the type described more likely (especially since television sets are almost always located close to walls). Drinking would make this kind of event all too likely - another factor which needs to be included in the brew.

[Xisiqomelir]

Match 7 was a really good game too, poor dude.

Here's my read, leaving aside the "Is it ok to kill sports fans?" turn the thread is taking: That man is the head of the household, he most likely bought that TV, he can watch whatever he wants whenever he damn well pleases. If the rest of them don't like it, they can hump it.

Another possible set-up is that David Makoeya is a useless indolent deadbeat, and it's actually the son who bought and paid for everything and puts up with his old man out of a sense of filial piety. Even in this case though, I feel the man ought to be owed a modicum of respect as nominal patriarch.

[PeZook]

Here's my read, leaving aside the "Is it ok to kill sports fans?" turn the thread is taking: That man is the head of the household, he most likely bought that TV, he can watch whatever he wants whenever he damn well pleases. If the rest of them don't like it, they can hump it.

Yeah, that's a recipe for having a happy household, man. Just ignore your spouse and children because you're the patriarch!

[Xisiqomelir]

Here's my read, leaving aside the "Is it ok to kill sports fans?" turn the thread is taking: That man is the head of the household, he most likely bought that TV, he can watch whatever he wants whenever he damn well pleases. If the rest of them don't like it, they can hump it.

Yeah, that's a recipe for having a happy household, man. Just ignore your spouse and children because you're the patriarch!

The son is 36. I don't know how they usually run things in Makweya, but in most of the rest of the world I think it would be reasonable to expect him to have his own establishment by that age. Then he could watch all the gospel he wanted to.

[aerius]

Here's my read, leaving aside the "Is it ok to kill sports fans?" turn the thread is taking: That man is the head of the household, he most likely bought that TV, he can watch whatever he wants whenever he damn well pleases. If the rest of them don't like it, they can hump it.

That sounds an awful lot like an oppressive dictatorship, those usually don't have a happy ending. Seriously, "it's mine, fuck you" is a great way to get everyone to hate him and kill him in his sleep. The amount of pure hate that builds up after enough years of that treatment is not something that you want to mess with. Put it this way, I bought all the computers in my place since I'm the guy with the CompSci degree, but if I kept hogging the computers and telling my wife that she can't use them, I'd likely end up taking an accidental fall off our 10th floor balcony one day.

[Xisiqomelir]

Here's my read, leaving aside the "Is it ok to kill sports fans?" turn the thread is taking: That man is the head of the household, he most likely bought that TV, he can watch whatever he wants whenever he damn well pleases. If the rest of them don't like it, they can hump it.

That sounds an awful lot like an oppressive dictatorship, those usually don't have a happy ending. Seriously, "it's mine, fuck you" is a great way to get everyone to hate him and kill him in his sleep.

I disagree with your analogy here. Eventually, you attain majority and get to walk. That's not an option in dictatorships.

The amount of pure hate that builds up after enough years of that treatment is not something that you want to mess with. Put it this way, I bought all the computers in my place since I'm the guy with the CompSci degree, but if I kept hogging the computers and telling my wife that she can't use them, I'd likely end up taking an accidental fall off our 10th floor balcony one day.

I don't think this analogy is that great either. Unless you're running a render farm or something, wouldn't you just use one computer at a time, leaving all the rest available? This is not the same as when there's only one television for 4 people.

[Sarevok]

All I can say is it was a fucked up family to begin with. They would have killed each other over some other sillyness if not a soccer game.

[Stuart]

That man is the head of the household, he most likely bought that TV, he can watch whatever he wants whenever he damn well pleases. If the rest of them don't like it, they can hump it. Another possible set-up is that David Makoeya is a useless indolent deadbeat, and it's actually the son who bought and paid for everything and puts up with his old man out of a sense of filial piety.

Given his age and the environment, it's almost certain the house, its content and most of the family income come from the son. That, in itself, is another contributer to the situation. Traditionally, the father and eldest males are paramount and do run things. However, in the modern economy, it's the young males who have the good jobs and earn all the money. Elderly men have menial jobs at best (this is particularly the case in South Africa since the abominable apartheit regime meant that few men of the father's generation got educated in much of anything while the post-apartheit young men have reasonable educations). So, the elderly men see their power and prestige slipping away and they (understandably) resent it. This isn't being a "useless indolent deadbeat", it's a very sad - indeed tragic - outcome of the kind of society South Africa had. Time has passed the father's generation by and left them without a role or function in a society.

This is where lack of people skills really kicks in. The old man was trying to re-establish his authority by demanding his desires be complied with. The others saw this as him throwing his weight around when he was living on their charity and reacted accordingly. Had either group a reasonable ration of empathy, they would have seen where the other was coming from and made allowances. Neither did and the result was a tragedy.

Even in this case though, I feel the man ought to be owed a modicum of respect as nominal patriarch

I'm sorry but here we have a fundamental disagreement. In my eyes, nobody is "owed" respect and nobody can "demand" respect. Respect has to be earned. If my presumptions about the background to this case are correct, the father probably did once have respect but his lack of economic power and attempts to maintain his position probably caused it to leach away. Some elderly men in his position maintain and even enhance their position by becoming the family conciliator and advisor, using age and experience to settle family disputes in ways that prevent exactly this kind of tragedy. It seems to me he went the opposite way. Instead of being the wise mediator who resolved family disputes fairly and justly, he became the cantankerous source of most of said disputes.

One can almost see the tragedy unfolding. Him starting as the patriarch and enjoying the privileges thereof. Then, his position slowly deteriorates as his income fades away and he becomes economically dependent on his son and his son's family. Resentful of his eroding power, he becomes more dogmatic and cantankerous to maintain his position, not realizing that his behavior is causing the respect in which he is held to fade away. Soon, family respect is replaced by dislike and frustration. That builds up until one day, a dispute over who watches what turns violent and ends in his death.

The son is 36. I don't know how they usually run things in Makweya, but in most of the rest of the world I think it would be reasonable to expect him to have his own establishment by that age. Then he could watch all the gospel he wanted to.

That's the problem, he probably did. In such societies, it's the usual thing to take in one's parents etc and look after them in their old age. In the absence of a welfare state, it's either that or leave them to starve (which is a good argument for welfare statism). He did get his own house so he could watch all the gospel he wanted and then found his father moving in and telling him he couldn't.

[Simon_Jester]

While the quote from his nieces about the victim may not be accurate, it is worth repeating:
"He was always a happy man, never violent," Makoeya's nieces, Miriam and Anna, told the Daily Sun newspaper.

Of course that may not be true, as I said above... but if true it would cast the incident in a very different light than the one Stuart is looking at it in.

Sure bitch a bit over the gospel show after you try to change the channel, but instead of trying to change it physically on the TV itself, just go out the door cursing to a bar or public gathering where there's a TV set up.

Yeah, but you don't expect your family to fucking beat you to death if you don't follow that rule. I can certainly see Stuart's point that this was probably an accidental death, and probably the culmination of a long buildup of frustration at the father. Even so, this is a long way from okay.

I understand the family's reaction, and Stuart's. Why? Because I've had a TV remote ripped out of my had while I was on lunch break because the salespeople I worked with didn't want to watch Blade Runner, they wanted to watch the football pregame show that was on over 100 TVs on the sales floor. It didn't matter that I was in the break room first, Sports were on, or were going to be on, and courtesy went out the window. Extrapolate that attitude day after day for years, and yes, I understand why the family attacked the man.

Timothy, I can certainly understand being irritated by this sort of thing. But if you'd responded to this by beating your coworkers to death with a rock... well, the nice men in blue would come to arrest you, and the odds are that the nice men in white would come and take you away to a well lit room with nice padded walls.

If they didn't, they ought to. Because no matter what we say about the need to be able to compromise, which you infer that this man did not have... the most basic of all social skills is to not murder people who piss you off. We can live in a society where people do annoying and unpleasant things to each other; we already do. We cannot live in a society where "he really pissed me off" is considered an acceptable defense for murder. It is too easy to really piss someone else off, unless you spend all your time locked in your room with the door barricaded. No one can be allowed a right to indulge a fit of anger with a fit of violence.

"He threatened me with violence" is a defense for murder. "He kept grabbing the TV remote and changing the channel" is not, plain and simple. Not even if he's been doing it for years. If you attack someone because of their offensive behavior, behavior which does not actually harm you beyond hurting your feelings, then you are in the wrong, plain and simple. Certainly if you attack them with lethal force- and slamming someone's head into a wall is lethal force.

Of course, depending on how much intent there was here, this may have been a lower degree of murder- it's quite reasonable that, as Stuart speculates, no one intended to kill the old man. Even so, this still crosses the line between civilized and animalistic behavior, and I think we need to recognize that.

I second the idea that there was probably more going on with that family than we know. If it had been just the wife or one of the "kids" having an outburst, it might have been an obvious case of a person being violently idiotic about TV (you know, the notion a few posters here seem to support), but it was a group response, they all rose up in anger and attacked the man, that looks more like there was some bottled up tension there.

That did strike me as relevant. If one person does it, it's one person snapping. If three people do it... it seems unlikely that they'd all snap at once. I'm not entirely sure which one happened here.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

People are known to show favouritism. Just because some say so and so was nice doesn't mean he was nice to everyone else.

[Oskuro]

People also act differently with younger children.

Of course, it might be possible that there was tension but that it was not fostered by the old man, but by ther rest of the family. Maybe it was a case of the family treating the man badly and expecting him to conform to their ways, and reacting with outrage when the man finally rebels?
Because I've seen examples of families where the father, who also happens to be the actual provider, is belittled and despised by his wife and children despite being a generally generous man.

Really, without more information there's little we can do besides speculate. Well, that and bash idiots who think killing sports fans is fine.

[Stuart]

While the quote from his nieces about the victim may not be accurate, it is worth repeating: He was always a happy man, never violent," Makoeya's nieces, Miriam and Anna, told the Daily Sun newspaper. Of course that may not be true, as I said above... but if true it would cast the incident in a very different light than the one Stuart is looking at it in.

Unfortunately, that's what one hears all the time.
"He was such a nice man, I can't believe he dressed up as a clown and ate children."
"She was a saint, everybody loved her."
"My husband would never do a thing like that."

Also part-time visitors typically have a very different impression of the dynamics of a household from those who live there all the time. That's a classic finding in domestic violence cases.

Yeah, but you don't expect your family to fucking beat you to death if you don't follow that rule. I can certainly see Stuart's point that this was probably an accidental death, and probably the culmination of a long buildup of frustration at the father. Even so, this is a long way from okay.

Sure it is, but the problem is that things escalate out of control. The sad fact is that nobody can predict where violence will end which is a pretty good reason for not getting involved in it. As I said earlier, the best rule for a family row is WALK AWAY.

Timothy, I can certainly understand being irritated by this sort of thing. But if you'd responded to this by beating your coworkers to death with a rock... well, the nice men in blue would come to arrest you, and the odds are that the nice men in white would come and take you away to a well lit room with nice padded walls.

That's a somewhat simplistic analysis. A better picture would be, salesperson tears remote out of Tim's hand and resets the channel. Tim takes it back and resets it back. Salesman tries to grab it back and misses when Tim resists, his grab turns into a blow that hits Tim. Tim interprets this as a deliberate attack, pushes salesman away. Salesman staggers back, trips on a fold in the carpet and falls backwards slamming his neck on the edge of a desk. Saleman gets perfect hangmans fracture and dies. Again, a presumption, but something of this sort almost certainly happened in that South African house.

"He threatened me with violence" is a defense for murder. "He kept grabbing the TV remote and changing the channel" is not, plain and simple. Not even if he's been doing it for years. If you attack someone because of their offensive behavior, behavior which does not actually harm you beyond hurting your feelings, then you are in the wrong, plain and simple. Certainly if you attack them with lethal force- and slamming someone's head into a wall is lethal force.

But we don't know how that happened. I've given two perfectly plausible scenarios that would put the whole thing in a very different light. Here's another. Father sets television to his channel. Daughter-in-law objects, takes the remote control and sets it back. Father tries to grab it and she sits on it. He tries to grab it from under her. His son sees his wife being attacked and spousal defense reaction kicks in. He grabs his father and throws him off her. He slams into the wall and good night. The causal mechanism here isn't "I want to watch something on television" but "he just attacked my wife". That's a very powerful driver and one a court may well find convincing.

Of course, depending on how much intent there was here, this may have been a lower degree of murder- it's quite reasonable that, as Stuart speculates, no one intended to kill the old man. Even so, this still crosses the line between civilized and animalistic behavior, and I think we need to recognize that.

It does indeed. What interests me (and a near lifetime of interest in why people react to things the way they do) is why, in this particular case, the line was crossed. The television channel change, as an isolated instance, doesn't even begin to come close to a reason. Hence my belief that there must have been a much greater background to this than we can gather from the account available.

That did strike me as relevant. If one person does it, it's one person snapping. If three people do it... it seems unlikely that they'd all snap at once. I'm not entirely sure which one happened here.

Not necessarily; events like this escalate very quickly which is why so many cops get killed on domestic violence calls. Again, our LEO friends can confirm this. They come in on a situation where husband is beating the crap out of his wife. They pull the husband off, he resists so the cop starts to arrest him. Then wifie comes up from behind and sticks a carving knife into our poor cop. The physical confrontation starts between two people and then spreads to involve bystanders. Another good reason to WALK AWAY (very rapidly). One thing I can guarantee, the police will get three different stories from the three surviving participants.

[Stuart]

Of course, it might be possible that there was tension but that it was not fostered by the old man, but by ther rest of the family. Maybe it was a case of the family treating the man badly and expecting him to conform to their ways, and reacting with outrage when the man finally rebels? Because I've seen examples of families where the father, who also happens to be the actual provider, is belittled and despised by his wife and children despite being a generally generous man.

It is possible but the dynamics of relations in that part of the world tend to favor the old man fostering theory. Either could be true though. As you say, we're speculating. What we can say with reasonable confidence is that this event did not just come out of nowhere. Unless heavy drinking was involved of course. If it was, then all bets are off.

Well, that and bash idiots who think killing sports fans is fine.

What the debate has suggested so far is that the original stress on the "other choice" being a gospel channel was misplaced. That gave the impression that it was a case of religious nuts bumping off an old man because he wanted to watch football. In fact it could equally be argued that it could have been any other choice of alternative programs from Aliens to Zulu - or nothing to do with television at all. I have no time for religious nuts either but they weren't the driver here. The situation in this domestic tragedy is much more complex and much more heartbreaking than the original post implied.

[Simon_Jester]

People are known to show favouritism. Just because some say so and so was nice doesn't mean he was nice to everyone else.

Quite true. At most, it suggestive- evidence that makes it marginally less likely that the man was simply an ass who provoked others to "understandable" violence. Not all that much less likely, because yes, outsiders won't see the household dynamics or the individuals involved the same way.

If this is ruled an accidental death, then yes, it can reasonably be written off as a "horrible shit happens" case. A lot would depend on details of the man's injuries and the circumstances that we simply don't know- did he suffer one blow to the head (could easily be an accident) or several (not so likely as an accident)? Was the head injury caused by the wall (could easily be an accident) or was it a blunt instrument (again, not so likely)?