/ 22 March 2001

Violence gnaws at SA?s security blanket

ALTHOUGH the political violence which threatened to tear South Africa apart a few years ago is on the decline, the country remains plagued by other forms of violence, says the SA Institute of Race Relations.

This is evident from the 2000/01 South Africa Survey, to be released this week. Terence Corrigan, one of the writers of the Survey, said: “South Africa is no longer threatened by violent instability, but insecurity arises from other types of violence: gang activity, urban terrorism, vigilantism, and feuding in the taxi industry.

?Such violence may not have political objectives [although this is often suspected], but it shares some characteristics of political violence. It suggests a level of organisation, is perceived to target certain people or groups systematically [unlike “random” crime], and can become a ?way of life? for both victims and perpetrators.?

There were 24_547 fatalities in political conflict between September 1984 and June 2000. Political fatalities reached their highest level in 1993, when 3_794 fatalities were reported.

Since 1994 political violence has declined consistently, the Survey reports.

The Survey notes that instances of urban terrorism – usually bomb detonations, and assassinations – have been reported over the past few years. Some 400 bombings occurred between 1994 and late 2000; most of these in the Western Cape. The government has held an anti-gangster initiative (Pagad) responsible for many of these, as well as for the assassination of a Wynberg magistrate. Pagad has denied such allegations and threatened legal action.

Corrigan said: “The farming community fears an alleged campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against farmers (rejecting police findings that farm attacks are entirely criminal). Some 800 farmers, farm workers, and their dependants died in attacks on farms between 1994 and 2000, according to figures from Agri South Africa, a farmers’ organisation.”

He added that there had been increases in the number of fatalities and the number of farm attacks over this period: some 92 people were murdered in 442 attacks during 1994, compared with 138 in 816 attacks in 1999.

The Survey also records instances of brutality by farmers against farm workers, a phenomenon sometimes regarded as provoking farm attacks.

The Survey further records gang-related crime. Police statistics show that there were 316 gang-related shootings in 1999 (lower than the 441 recorded in 1998). This might not, however, reveal the extent of such crime – some 70% of crime in the Western Cape is believed to be gang-related.

“Persistent crime resulted in many people turning to vigilantism,” Corrigan observed. Some 137 people were killed by vigilantes between January 1999 and March 2000. There was evidence of support for vigilantism (although less for vigilantes punishing suspects). Mapogo-a-Mathamaga, the country’s largest vigilante group, had an estimated 50 000 members in January 2000.