Opinion

The time for excuses is over

December 28, 2006 Edition 1

How can it be an act of patriotism to pretend that crime, and specifically violent crime, isn't a major threat to South Africa's social cohesion and stability?

That is as bizarre a notion as I've ever heard. Yet that's what the deputy president of the ruling party, Jacob Zuma, seems to be saying. The media are making crime look worse by over-reporting it, he told a German magazine last week. It is tantamount to disloyalty to the country - the media in other countries are far more responsible when they reflect criminality in their societies, he says.

Deny it and it will go away, appears to be Zuma's approach. For once the Minister of Safety and Security, Charles Nqakula, must be in agreement with his party's deputy leader. If we ignore it, the raped and the violated will feel better. If you really love South Africa and our democracy, you will pretend that we live in a gentle, peaceful paradise.

There's a subtle subtext to this approach: it is mostly selfish, fatcat whites who are unhappy with black majority rule who complain about crime. What utter nonsense. White protestations may indeed be the most audible, but only because of their still privileged status in society and their bigger access to the media compared to the large numbers of ordinary working class and unemployed black people.

The stark reality is that poor black people are more affected by crime and criminal violence than the middle classes who can afford security guards, barbed wire fences, high walls and electronic security systems. How can we pretend to be a normal society if more is spent on private security than on the national police service?

I have long been reluctant to comment on the all-consuming crime wave. I have told myself that an increase in criminality was probably inevitable after our swift and fundamental change from a white-dominated police state to an open democracy. I considered that poverty and the persistent vast chasm between the haves and the have-nots must be contributing; that our violent history and culture of glorifying violence in the decades before 1994 must at least be partly to blame. But the time for looking for excuses is over. While we should always ponder the roots of our society's criminal tendencies, we should all really now be honest and say: whatever the causes, crime is the biggest threat to South African society. It is in many ways a bigger and more immediate threat than poverty, HIV and Aids, malaria, road deaths, racism and illiteracy.

Crime is ripping our social fabric to threads, preventing us from focussing on other problems.

Here's a riddle: why do most South Africans feel that criminality is on the increase, but the responsible minister quotes statistics indicating that it is on the decline? I have no way of telling whether the minister and the SAPS are "cooking the books" to make it look more rosy. If they're not doing that, then the only explanation must be that we have reached a threshold of tolerance and even when there is a stabilisation or decline, we are so sick and tired of it that we don't feel it.

I'm irritated by those who write newspaper editorials or letters to newspapers warning that we need to bring crime under control if we want to be successful in our hosting of the Soccer World Cup in 2010. The World Cup is just one event. Crime is threatening our own people's very future.

I'm far more concerned about how the all-pervasive criminality will shape the kind of life we and our children will be leading in the next decades. I have no explanation why President Thabo Mbeki and his cabinet colleagues cannot see how serious the crisis is. Perhaps it is as simple as that they live their lives away from ordinary people and behind lines of bodyguards and security walls. Perhaps they are paralysed by the enormity of the problem.

I'm no criminologist. But I have a very clear understanding that we would only be discouraging citizens from taking up crime as a way of life when we make sure they know that crime doesn't pay: that they will definitely end up in jail if they do crime.

That must mean a major shake-up in the SAPS, starting with the national commissioner and some of his regional commissioners. Too many of our policemen have become part of the problem rather than the solution.

But we need more than a change of attitude, we need a new, effective management of the police that would ensure the men and women would be properly trained, deployed and managed.

We need the right balance of bobbies on the beat, patrol cars, crime intelligence, detective work and forensics. This shake-up should be accompanied by an urgent and complete overhaul of our judicial system to make sure the guilty get sent to jail.

Crime is fast destroying the great South African dream. It need not be so.

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