Podbit · Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder
On May 4, 2011, a crowd gathered near the Chayamoya sugarcane fields for the Umzinto Wall of Remembrance. Thirteen names etched into stone. A prosecutor received an unexpected title from the community: hero.
Where this was said
At 52:10 · chapter starts 48:15
On December 23, 2010, Judge King Ndlovu read his verdict: guilty on all 13 murder counts and all 13 robbery counts with aggravating circumstances. Taki walked out of the dock smirking. For Nene, the outcome was acquittal — the judge found the state had not proven she was aware of the killings, though he noted she had brought the trouble on herself by not cooperating with police. Her sister wept with relief; some victims' families, like Mbongi who had lost her sister Makosi, accepted the acquittal gracefully. At sentencing on January 19, 2011, prosecutor Nokxolo Takuana asked for the maximum: life on every murder count, 15 years on every robbery count. The judge obliged with 13 life sentences plus 208 years, writing explicitly that his intention was for Taki to remain in prison for the rest of his life, and personally urging the Department of Correctional Services never to consider parole. Taki's appeal was refused immediately. The gallery erupted — singing, dancing, weeping. Outside, the crowd carried their relief into the open air, chanting for him to die in prison. The weight landed differently for each family: some were managing; others hadn't got there yet. On May 4, 2011, a crowd gathered near the sugarcane fields for the Umzinto Wall of Remembrance, where 13 names were etched into stone — a monument built on Workers' Day to say out loud what the case had proven: when women have no income and no options, they become easier targets.
On December 23, 2010, Judge King Ndlovu found Taki guilty on 13 murder charges and 13 robbery charges. Taki walked out of the dock smirking. The judge called his testimony evasive and untrue and his alibi weightless.
On January 19, 2011, Taki was sentenced to life in prison 13 times over plus an additional 208 years for 13 robbery convictions, with the judge explicitly urging the parole board never to release him.
On January 19, 2011, Taki received 13 life sentences, one for each murder, plus 208 additional years for the robbery convictions. The judge wrote explicitly that Taki should die in prison, and personally urged the parole board never to release him.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
Every person lives in constant tension between infinite possible selves and the finite, limited self they actually are. Tipping too far toward infinite possibility produces a loss of identity; too much confinement in the finite produces stagnation. Kierkegaard argued that this tension is never solved — only managed.
Standing outside a cold pool imagining reasons not to jump is the exact experience of pre-commitment anxiety. Once you jump, the shock passes and you wonder why you ever hesitated. The same mechanism governs every significant commitment in life — the dread is always on the outside, the relief on the inside.
Traditional societies had rites of passage that closed off childhood and opened adulthood. Modern society kept the in-between liminal phase but eliminated the ritual that resolved it. The result is 'emerging adulthood' — a decade or more stuck in the transition — engineered by rising education requirements, women entering the workforce, and delayed marriage.
When Mark Manson proposed to his wife, software he didn't know was running — the low-level assessment of sexual market value and other options — suddenly shut down. Commitment doesn't take freedom away. It trades optionality (freedom to do many things) for focus (freedom from distraction). John Dewey called these positive and negative freedom, and the latter is more powerful.
Mark Manson spent years as a location-independent digital nomad — always a new country, a new woman, a new venture. Then the diminishing returns kicked in: countries started feeling the same, dates felt identical, businesses all frustrated him. The cure wasn't more novelty. It was narrowing: one place, one person, one career.
Every meaningful commitment has a dip — an initial peak of excitement, a brutal trough of difficulty, and a second higher peak for those who push through. Institutions once kept people in the dip long enough to reach the other side. With infinite optionality and no institutions, everyone bails at the bottom and restarts the cycle of shallow first peaks.
Stage one — the aesthetic — is the default: chasing sensation, novelty, and keeping every door open. Stage two — the ethical — is learning to choose with eyes wide open, accepting the trade-offs. Stage three — the religious — is when a commitment becomes so total that it no longer feels like a choice. It just feels like who you are.
The ethical stage is rational commitment — you can explain your choices. The religious stage is when your commitment exceeds rational justification. You can't explain why. It just feels like it chose you. Kierkegaard called this the 'virtue of the absurd' — and it's represented not just in faith but in the entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes who can't imagine doing anything else.
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