The residents of Cape Town claim to have found an effective new weapon in South Africa’s battle against crime: staring.
Crime levels have reportedly tumbled in two neighbourhoods where groups of up to 20 residents go on patrol armed with nothing more than filthy looks.
The groups stop and stare in silence at suspected prostitutes, kerb crawlers and drug dealers. Discomfited, the objects of observation move away.
”Sometimes we talk to them, but we never argue or get aggressive. They usually leave after just a few minutes,” JP Smith, a city councillor, told the Sunday Times newspaper.
Since importing the idea from the United States four months ago, the patrols have cleaned up streets in notoriously sleazy areas around Green Point and Sea Point.
Accompanied by police, residents wear yellow bibs and sometimes bring their dogs.
One group of prostitutes was apparently so unnerved that the women went home to watch television. Their clients have been discouraged by having their licence numbers noted and letters sent to their homes.
The campaign is one of South Africa’s gentler forms of civic action against crime. Communities have been known to beat and kill suspected thieves, rapists and murderers.
Several times this year, vigilantes have used the necklace, a tyre filled with petrol that is placed around a victim’s neck and ignited. — Guardian Unlimited Â