Back to main Mpilonhle site

A Thief is a Thief

Recently we have had to deal with a few cases of stolen items here at Mpilonhle. Some of the items lost are laptops, 3G Modems, cameras and most recently computer monitors. Now some of these items have been recovered, unfortunately others not. I would really like to attend a court case of someone who stole from me personally or from the organisation.

I have to ask why would someone take something that doesn’t belong to them. How people are able to go on day by day knowing that they have cheated someone or some organisation of valuable items they worked hard for. There are only things that we can assume may be a reason for someone to want to do these things.

The first of many reasons is for money. On the black market you can sell an item for 50% of its value–possibly even more if the item is popular in the community at the time. Right now the most popular items are IT gadgets. Now the strange thing is even if a person does not know how to operate them they still take it. This type of thief is known as a professional.

The second most common reason people steal is obsession. They can’t help themselves and they steal just to get the rush. This type of thief will take anything they can get there hands on because they just do it to see if they can get away.

Last but not least the third most common reason that people steal is for survival. This type of thief steals things that he/she needs to survive. Most of the time they take things like clothing for their children or medicine, baby formula and sometimes food. This type of shoplifting you can understand, but the act still wrong and illegal.

No matter which of the three reasons a person has for stealing, it is still wrong. Someone I know once said “a person not only steals items but trust as well gets stolen at the same time”.In addition to greed thieves also have no conscience. This allows them to steal and not feel guilty about it. They actually believe that they are doing nothing wrong.