Street thugs, who go by the somewhat more glamorous name of Mat Rempit, are back with their two-wheel thuggery in the capital city. They are a harm to themselves, other road users and the rest of society.
Like all harms, street thuggery on two wheels must be treated as a disease. And a national one at that. From the capital cities of the north to the ones in the south, the Mat Rempit menace emerges with new strains as pandemics do.
Not that we haven't treated it as such. We have been treating it as such for the longest time. The problem is that we have got the focus wrong: too much attention on cures and almost none on prevention.
One example of our obsession with cures is the idea of providing a racing circuit, where the proponents of the idea thought the street thuggery would begin and end. Surprisingly, those behind the idea don't seem to realise that they are fanning the spread of the Mat Rempit menace at the cost of taxpayers.
This approach is guaranteed to make street thuggery disappear for a time and reappear as it has been doing since the 1980s. We could have nipped it in the bud then, but by to-ing and fro-ing from one cure to another, we have spread the disease nationwide.
Prevention requires a deep dive into the problem, which will take us to the sources of it all: parents, the frail character of the street thugs and the bad influence of peers.
Start with parents. But first, a point to note about the Mat Rempit menace. It is not congenital, meaning it is not inherited. But something close to inheritance happens at home.
Here is a divine wisdom: a child is born innocent but it is the parents who turn him or her into a good or bad human being. In a more secular language, it is not nature that is to be blamed but nurture.
This can happen either out of mimicry or negligence. Any permanent solution must begin here. Religious education will certainly be of help. But the issue is such that community leaders have not been proactive enough to shepherd their flock.
The thing about moral muscle building is that it must start early. As an old Malay adage — "melentur buluh biarlah dari rebungnya" — puts it, nurturing must happen early. Otherwise, two-wheel street thuggery will be cancerous as it is now, with Mat Rempit streaming their dangerous stunts live on TikTok.
The police are compelled to go undercover in special squads, after trying many curative measures. What a great waste of police resources and time!
The moral fibre of the Mat Rempit and their peers needs early nurturing, too. A novel idea is being tested at Maktab Rendah Sains Mara schools, with appreciable results. But for educating students on the dangers of corruption.
This idea can be borrowed to educate our young minds on the dangers of Mat Rempit culture. But it must start earlier at the primary school level. This is where the "rebung" of the Malay adage is.
Our focus on cures has led to the loss of at least a couple of generations. Time to switch to prevention before
we lose more.