Last week the South African Police Service issued the annual crime statistics. What these show is that, overall, the incidence of reported crime in the country is declining, indicating a reduction in the number of actual crimes committed.
There are some in our country who have questioned their integrity and reliability. Essentially, these people are making the firm assertion that [we] are lying to the country when we say that gradually we are winning the war against crime.
A newspaper carried an article headed “Police statistics on child abuse do not reflect reality, activists warn”. On the same page was another article entitled “Rape has become a sickening way of life in our land”. The author of the article on rape is described by the newspaper as “an internationally recognised expert on sexual violence and post-exposure prophylaxis [Charlene Smith]”.
In an article published by The Washington Post in June 2000, this “internationally recognised expert” wrote: “Here [in Africa, Aids] is spread primarily by heterosexual sex — spurred by men’s attitudes towards women. We won’t end this epidemic until we understand the role of tradition and religion — and of a culture in which rape is endemic and has become a prime means of transmitting disease, to young women as well as children.”
In simple language, she was saying African traditions, indigenous religions and culture prescribe and institutionalise rape … make every African man a potential rapist. Given this view, which defines the African people as barbaric savages, it should come as no surprise that she writes “South Africa has the highest rates of rape in the world, according to Interpol”.
Last year Interpol had 181 affiliated national police services. Of these, only 21 submitted reports to Interpol on the incidence of crime in their countries. It would be most instructive to know how Interpol arrives at “world” figures enabling it to arrive at the conclusion about our country.
It may [also] be of interest that a Demographic and Health Survey for South Africa carried out by an organisation called Macro International, funded by the United States government through USAid, showed that rural African women in our country reported a lower rate of rape than women in the US. The reference to our rural women is especially apposite because it is in the rural areas that we should find entrenched habits that derive from African culture, traditions and religious beliefs.
But, of course, for those who are determined to propagate the view that our crime statistics have been “massaged” to tell a lie, and are not credible, such research results do not exist. The June 2004 issue of SA Reconciliation Barometer, of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, carries an article entitled “Crime, security and fear of the other”, written by Nahla Valji, Bronwyn Harris and Graeme Simpson.
They say: “For many South Africans today, our new democracy feels fraught with threats; in particular, a fear of crime fuelled by the mythology that whites are the primary targets merely because of their race. From this perspective, the racialised discourse of crime not only misrepresents whites as the predominant victims, but conversely portrays blacks as the primary perpetrators …
“Race is commonly coded into everyday conversation. For example, ‘the hijacker’ frequently means ‘the young, black, male criminal’ in white suburbia. Viewing the new South Africa through a prism of fear creates an identity of victimhood that is linked to race, reinforcing the divided and racialised identities of the past.”
There is another article on the Internet entitled “Dangers of South Africa: Fear of crime” written by Bronwyn McIntosh, a white South African who has emigrated to the US. She says: “Do you know that feeling of awakening at 3am? Ah yes, we all know that too well, that sudden knowledge that a loud noise has awakened you — the sound of a car starting, the sound of a gun shot, the sound of a scream, the sound of police sirens blaring, dogs barking, the alarm on the front gate triggered by someone opening it, the outside security lights blazing because of movement outside, the security alarm blaring. These were the daily realities of living in a wealthy ‘white’ suburb on the fringe of Cape Town.
“Sure, life is cheap there, in more ways than one! And for foreigners, the climate, the scenery, the people and the opportunities available must seem boundless… [but] one has to … be prepared for the reality of life in the country that has the highest murder, rape and Aids statistics in the world.”
Of course, what she is conveying to the rest of the world about a “wealthy white suburb on the fringe of Cape Town” is an outright lie.
Jason Carter is a white American who spent two years in our country as a member of the US Peace Corps. In 2002 he was interviewed by National Geographic News and said: “The other thing that really opened doors in my mind was the psychological residue of apartheid, that is really similar, I think, to what we’re still dealing with in the US. There are self-confidence issues in the black community, and powerlessness and fear in the white community.”
The psychological residue of apartheid has produced a psychosis among some of us such that, to this day, they do not believe that our non-racial democracy will survive and succeed. They dare not allow themselves to hope for the future, because they know that the pain of having it dashed, which they are convinced will happen, will be too great. So they look everywhere for evidence of decline … Crime in our country provides them with the most dramatic evidence of that decline … the proof that sooner or later things will fall apart.
Perhaps we will have to accept what Carter said, that it will take us more than a generation to rid ourselves of the psychological residue of apartheid. For some, the truth we will always tell about the progress we have made and will make, in the interest of all South Africans, black and white, will always lack credibility.