Ricardo Dunn and Nicole Fritz report on the state of crime today
Almost 90 percent of the 132 people who were murdered in one weekend in February were poor, young, black men.
Many headlines in South Africa give the impression that whites are the primary target of violent crime in this country.
That is not the case.
If a murder victim is black and it is reported in the mainly white press, there is rarely more than a paragraph. And of course most of the victims’ identities are unknown when their bodies are found.
Most victims — 84 of them — of the weekend slaughter in mid- February were young black men who died from stabbings.
Many of the murders during the weekend were not spontaneous attacks, but resulted from an argument or domestic fracas — and were alcohol-related.
Kindiza Ngubeni, a researcher at the Centre for Violence and Reconciliation (CVR) in Johannesburg, said a large percentage of murder victims are found to have a high level of alcohol in their blood at the time of their deaths.
Over the weekend in question, off-duty police officers were allegedly responsible for five of the murders committed. Each case involved the use of a gun.
Ngubeni said that murders committed by police officers were often stress-related. “In the past many policemen were working against their communities. They were not accepted by their communities and this created great stress. In addition, the risk, the lean earnings and the continual involvement with criminals augment an already stressful situation.”
Children were also among victims over this February weekend. Two babies died from poisoning. One was Lebohong Machusi, who died at the age of one year and nine months in Maraisburg on the Weat Rand. Her mother, Lizzy (23), said she had given her baby herbal medicine. Police are investigating.
The other baby, from the eastern Cape, has not yet been identified. Both little girls were apparantly forced to consume large quantities of traditional medicine.
Two unidentified girls, aged about 11 and 15, were raped and murdered in Uitenhage, Port Elizabeth. Their parents have not reported them missing..
Dikeledi Mogale, a14-year-old girl, was abducted and shot dead in the Northern Province.
Of the women murdered, most knew their assailants. Lisa Vetten, education co-ordinator of the sexual harrasment education project at the CVR, completed a pilot study last year detailing why women are murdered.
She focused on murders in Gauteng during 1993 and 1994, concluding that women were at much greater risk from their lovers, friends and acquaintances than men were.
She found that in more than half of the cases examined, the woman was murdered by a family member, acquaintance or friend.
During the weekend in question last month xxxx women were
murdered.