analysis
Joel Pollak
South Africans may have many insights to offer the United States as it struggles to respond to the events of September 11. Aside from conflict resolution, the one thing South Africans are more familiar with is crime. And while the recent attacks are being considered an act of war, and while they may have had political motivations, they were first and foremost crimes.
Nowadays, attacks on public buildings are rare in South Africa. But violent crimes occur daily. Most South Africans recognise this as a product of the country’s past. Colonialism and apartheid created a cavernous gap in wealth between the largely white elite and the mostly black masses; the old regime was propped up throughcruel state-sponsored violence. Today’s crime is partly a result ofyesterday’s injustice.
But crime is not simply the desperate response of the downtrodden. Many criminals are not even poor. Some of the country’s poorest areas have relatively low crime rates. And the level of brutality that marks many crimes almost defies explanation.
Jonny Steinberg, editor of Crime Wave, a recent book on crime in South Africa, suggests the criminal underworld has become a counter-culture reaching into every part of the country’sracial and economic spectrum. ”Crime in South Africa is animated by farmore than the exigencies of earning a living,” he writes. ”It is also about lifestyle. Its members are seduced by an ensemble of ethics, valuesand tastes.”
These remarks resonate with the ongoing global debate about terrorism. Following the attacks on the US, many critics have spoken of the systemic global problems worsened by US foreign andeconomic policy.
But others point out that terrorism has acquired a lifeof its own, and cannot be simply described as the consequence of Americanhegemony. It has become a sinister global counterculture, appropriating advanced technology, populist fervour and religious themes toideological and financial ends.
Enthusiasts of a ”search and destroy” approach argue terrorism should be eliminated through direct action against the terrorists themselves and the countries in which they operate. Theiropponents advocate a ”remove the causes” method, which aims to curbterrorism by changing those US policies that foster it.
These two positions resemble South African schools ofthought on crime what Steinberg refers to as the ”law andorder” approach and the ”social crime prevention” idea. The formeradvocates a massive crackdown while the latter argues that massive economic upliftment is the long-term solution.
But there is a growing awareness in South Africa that neither of these positions is sufficient. ”There is no development without law,and there is no law without development,” Steinberg notes.
Moreover, when it comes to ”law and order”, Steinberg adds a further caveat: some approaches to law enforcement are better than others. Themost brutal and unrestrained methods may worsen crime and violate the democratic principles that South Africa aims to uphold.
In addition, fighting crime means realising that South Africa remains a heterogeneous place. ”In many parts of South Africa, and to many of its people, the law has yet to arrive,” Steinberg observes.
Any serious crime-fighting effort will have to bring these areas into themainstream social and legal framework.
Ultimately, this means that the criminal counter-culture will have to beconfronted and overcome. But force alone will not be the answer. Theremust be an effort to undermine the underworld from within by changing itsvalues. And that means encouraging a cultural transformation that extendsbeyond the underworld itself. For example, the willingness of manyordinary South Africans to buy cheap stolen goods must be reversed.
There is, above all, a recognition that to fight crime, one needs at least to understand it on its own terms, and to engage itmorally, as well as physically and economically. There is also anawareness that the fight against crime is not a battle of ”us” against”them”. Everyone is part of a society whose values and structures need to change if crime is to be stopped.
Many of these lessons of South Africa’s fight against crime are applicableto the war against terrorism. The US and its allies should recognise that states that harbour terrorists, like Afghanistan, are black holes of institutional andeconomic failure, testimonies to the heterogeneous character of globalisation. A fight against terrorists must be accompanied by an effort to integrate these states into the world order more on promising terms.
There must also be an attempt to understand the terrorist counter-culture, and to engage with the ideologies that give it moral and institutionalsupport.
Above all, the war against global terrorism cannot be reduced to aconflict between ”us” and ”them.” The criminal attacks on New York andWashington were a global disaster, and require a global effort. That effort must be informed by an understanding of our common global destinyjust as South African crime-fighting mustrely on a shared sense of national destiny. For nowhere on earth iscompletely safe, and none of us can emigrate from the world.
Joel Pollak, a citizen of both the United States and South Africa, is a freelance journalist based in Cape Town