Crime has taken over from politics as our country’s major source of instability, the largest brake on development, the most common reason for emigration and the greatest fear of investors. A solution requires a combination of cash, public support and involvement, and — most important of all — imagination.
One of the oddities of the current situation is that although the police are underfunded, underresourced and underpaid, the country is spending hundreds of millions a year running a private security industry that employs 195 000 people (registered security officers, excluding in-house company security staff).
Some would argue that this is a natural market response: where the police have failed at crime prevention, the market has thrown up its own solution: privatised crime control. But private security is only reactive: there is little attempt to pursue and convict criminals. So all it does is add to the high-wall mentality, whereby those who can afford it try (largely unsuccessfully) to hide from the crime on the streets behind fortresses of concrete and razor wire.
Is one approach not to try and attract some of this expenditure into the cash-hungry police? The South African Police Services is trying to involve civilians in crime prevention through a policy of community policing. Would those who spend hundreds of rands a month on private protection not prefer to contribute to more effective anti-crime drives in their area? Would companies, which account for 95 percent of private security expenditure, not prefer a long-term investment in more effective anti-crime action?
It would have to be done locally, since nobody would be eager to give more money to police in ways that did not bring tangible benefits. And it would have to be effective — and that’s the big if — with a police force still in transition.
But if local community police forums were to raise money for visible anti-crime drives in their area, it would encourage public involvement, put pressure on local stations to show success in reducing crime, and allow for some form of local incentive scheme for effective policing.
It could mobilise significant funds for the police. The Security Association of South Africa estimates that expenditure on guard services has risen from R100- million in 1986 to R350-million this year, part of a R2,24-billion annual industry.