CHARLENE SMITH, Johannesburg | Friday
A SOUTH African is 12 times more likely to be murdered than the international norm, according to a leading medical researcher.
A South African is also two-and-a-half times more likely to be murdered than to die in a road accident.
And a teenager in Cape Town is more likely to be shot dead than to die in a traffic accident or of natural causes, according to a two-year surveillance study at 37 mortuaries in six provinces by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Unisa – and in which the researcher, Professor Mahomed Dada, the head of the department of forensic medicine at the University of Natal, is a participant.
The period of research during which the MRC and Unisa figures were collated covers the government’s one-year moratorium on crime statistics.
The study’s sample is extensive. It covers 45% of those who died in South Africa last year and 25% of those who died in 1999. The survey covers deaths by all causes. After death every corpse, even if removed by a private undertaker, is either taken first to a state mortuary for the death to be recorded or the undertaker is compelled to submit details of the cause of death to a state mortuary. Every death from unnatural causes has to go to state mortuaries for an autopsy to be performed to determine the precise cause.
The only country with a higher murder rate than South Africa is drug-ridden Colombia. But no country is more violent towards its children than South Africa.
Dr Sandra Marais, senior specialist scientist of the MRC’s Crime, Violence and Injury Lead programme in Cape Town, notes that in 1995 the major causes of death for babies aged from birth to four was injuries, coupled with low birthweight and perinatal causes.
However, a child aged five to 14 in the Western Cape is more likely to be beaten to death, shot, stabbed or die from injuries sustained in falls, fires and the like than to die a natural death. After that, the rate of death by violence or unnatural causes declines with age. Marais points out that ”in the normal course of things the probability of a child aged five to 14 dying of natural causes is much lower than for younger children or older people”.
Among children who died in Cape Town by 1999/2000, the rate of death by violence was highest among those aged 15 to 19, with 66,3% of deaths in this age group resulting from murder, 24,4% dying from accidents and 5,2% as a result of suicide.
Marais says: ”The data from 1999 and 2000 is incredibly high, 41% of children in Cape Town who die under the age of 19 are murdered, most often with firearms (50% of cases). In every age category for children under 19, firearm deaths were the most frequent cause of violent death. I doubt that children get murdered to this extent anywhere in the world.
”Compared to this, 42% of children in Cape Town who die, perish in accidents, mostly as pedestrians in motor vehicle accidents, but also from drowning, burns and other accidents.”
The research was initiated, according to research coordinator, Dr Mohammed Seedat of the Unisa Institute for Social Sciences, because of ”the lack of reliable and quality data on the who, what, how and when of homicide and other non-fatal injuries. Most of our prevention and curative work is based on political decisions, intuition and emotive responses to high-profile deaths.”
Seedat said access to firearms should be reduced, as they are the leading cause of death. He says the government needs to introduce harsher gun control legislation and more stringent steps to control alcohol abuse.
”We need jobs, equal economic opportunity, a decrease in the earning differentials between men and women and race groups, infrastructural development, better preventative policing, conflict-reducing skills in the home and schools, home visitation for those at risk of violence and an immediate change in physical environments that lend themselves to violence.”
Dada says firearms are preferred as a killing tool now because blood does not splash over the perpetrator, ”and it’s less personal”.
He adds: ”Stabbings are mostly seen at Christmas or New Year when people tend to get drunk and stab friends or relatives.”
He said there was a steady but noticeable rise in suicide, especially among young black people, but it was impossible to know if this was attributable to HIV or other causes.
Dada said In the rural areas many doctors don’t know the difference between unnatural and natural causes of death. Up to 50% of deaths in some rural areas are not reported. Or doctors will fraudulently conspire with a family, who, for example, may not want an autopsy for supposed religious reasons and will list ‘natural’ as the cause of death in a homicide.
Dada said police will ”in some cases say there is no van to pick up a body of a person killed in a homicide, so there is no post-mortem, no criminal investigation … the system of justice fails the people who need it the most – the poor.”
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