Hein Marais
GROWING fears about South Africa’s crime rate have failed to prompt business to finance one of the country’s most successful anti-crime projects.
The Johannesburg-based Trauma Clinic, which provides free counselling to victims of crime, has had its funding requests turned down by a welter of major South African corporations. They include South African Breweries, Johnnic, Sun International, Rembrandt and Foodcorp.
Run by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, the clinic has been swamped by requests for counselling by victims of hijackings, armed robbery and domestic violence. In 1996, it handled more than 175 new clients a month.
The clinic has been forced to run on reserve funds for the past four months. It has sent out 150 funding applications to corporations this year, but has so far received less than R10 000 in pledges.
“We’ve been slightly distressed at the initial responses from business,” the director, Graeme Simpson, says. Only three companies – Anglovaal, JCI and Standard Bank – contributed funds to the clinic last year.
The main reason cited by the companies is that they have already donated elsewhere. “Requests to support worthy causes have now increased to such an extent that it has become impossible to help even some of the most deserving causes,” Rembrandt’s communications office wrote to Simpson.
Simpson believes part of the problem is a perception that victim counselling is mainly remedial and does not prevent crime.
“This work is proactive – it’s an important intervention in the cycle of violence in our society,” he says.
Corporations contacted by the Mail & Guardian this week cited exhausted funds as the reason for declining the clinic’s requests. But observers say many companies still devote negligible amounts to their corporate social responsibility programmes.