It’s the economy, stupid
Editor Ferial Haffajee makes some bold statements and assertions in her article ”Meaning of the Selebi saga” (December 21). She should have been more cautious and thoughtful; I found her arguments loosely constructed.
High-personality crimes usually give rise to such outcries. While the government believes one murder is a murder too many, the reality in South Africa is that the more famous you are, the greater the clamour for instant justice.
In most of these cases, the evidence shows that perpetrator and victim knew each other. This has been so with the baby Jordan murder, the murders of Dr Anwar Kadwa and his wife Munirah, the case of Constable Frances Rasuge and the like.
We cannot be blind to these realities and hold government accountable for the personal choices people make and the consequences thereof.
The basic problem with Haffajee’s view is that she paints the picture of crime in our country with a single brush. There are some shades of crime that the South African Police Service is able to police and other crimes where society must help the police in their local communities.
Despite interventions by government, civil society and local communities, children continue to be maimed and killed by strangers and those who claim to be their protectors: fathers, uncles, family friends and trusted neighbours.
And so ”the ‘fuckers’ must die”, to paraphrase your view, might not be the best long-term solution. The solution is multifaceted and involves power relations that cannot be solved by police action alone.
On the matter of Jackie Selebi, I find it rather disingenuous for the editor to somehow link the state of crime to the national commissioner of police.
Indeed, the allegations made by the Mail & Guardian against Selebi are serious, but they are only allegations. The courts will, if necessary, hear credible collaborative evidence, not the rumours or vilifications or vindictiveness that the M&G has run in the past months.
Urban terror is non-existent; the warlords of KwaZulu-Natal are no more — and it is Selebi who ended these phenomena.
Debate on crime in South Africa is non-negotiable, but the manner in which we exercise this responsibility must be within the realm of constructive criticism and engagement, with due regard to our laws and Constitution. — Leonard Ramatlakane, MEC for Community Safety, Western Cape
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Haffajee implies that much of the crime wave is a function of police corruption, more than hinting that it starts at the top with Selebi.
Selebi is not a common factor. What is common is the global economic dispensation, which is apparently accepted as inevitable, so that its obvious cruelties, unsustainability, destructiveness and general inhumanity escape examination in almost all of the mainstream media, including the M&G.
This economy:
- systemically enhances the incomes of the rich and reduces those of the poor, leading to inequality that is a source of anger among the poor — and fury is a potent cause of violence;
- systemically destroys family and community life, forcing people to live, sleep, procreate, quarrel, make-up, cook, study and rear children in crowded, unhygienic, non-serviced slums. In those conditions, happy well-balanced, loving childhood experiences — once assumed to be the bedrock of a stable, law-abiding society — must be the exception rather than the rule;
- ensures that the energies of the youth, especially males, will be channelled into associations whose entrepreneurship will find criminal outlets;
- fertilises the soil for top-quality global criminal gangs that find it easy to recruit among people who literally have nothing to lose;
- ensures that the scale of employment created by current growth policies is pitiful compared to the need;
- prices staple foods too high for poor people to afford; and
- gives maximum political clout to those in whose interests it is to reduce taxes, and hence government expenditure.
Yes, the M&G frequently features the horrors of poverty but it does not make the link with the economy. Instead, the M&G perpetuates notions around the inevitability of the global competitive market. And it implies no connection between the concentration of wealth and continuing poverty. — Margaret Legum, Cape Town
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I enjoyed the eloquence and fervour of the editorial, ”Meaning of the Selebi saga”.
It made me tearful and angry.
Tears, though, can easily lead to despair and that isn’t what we need as a nation right now. Then again, I don’t suppose anger is a very useful response, either.
I have to confess, I’m not sure what is needed to put things right.
In any event, good luck to you and your colleagues in your campaign to get things fixed. — James Duncan
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I agree that crime in our country has reached shocking levels. I think the biggest reason for this is because the average South African is unable to distinguish between right and wrong.
Unfortunately, this will not improve while we have members of government who also seem unable to make this distinction.
How can you tell people that it is wrong to steal money from a cash-in-transit vehicle, but it’s okay to steal state money by falsifying travel claims?
How can you tell a guy that it’s wrong to take a bribe (or to rape a woman), but it’s okay if you’re the deputy president?
I know Jacob Zuma was found not guilty on the rape charge (and has not been prosecuted on the corruption charge), but, as deputy president, Zuma should have known that people look up to him and see him as an example of what a good law-abiding South African citizen should be like. He should have conducted his personal life in such a manner that no one could point a finger at him.
The average South African’s attitude is: if the deputy president (or police commissioner or minister or department chief) can do this (or that), then why can’t I?
As soon as our justice system starts to take extreme measures against public figures for their crimes, the average criminal will realise that he or she will be dealt with in the same manner. — Amorita van den Heever
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Two time zones for SA?
The second cricket Test against India in Durban was a frustrating affair with the equivalent of a day’s play lost because of bad light. With a 9.30am start, not much could be done to make up the lost time. Durban gets the short straw as a result of our inability to implement daylight saving in this country.
Of course, daylight saving has been debated often over the years and the reasons why it hasn’t been implemented are understood. But what if we had two time zones, and introduced daylight saving?
Sure, there would be confusion initially as we adjust to two time zones and the advancing and retarding of clocks twice a year, but this would be insignificant compared to the advantages.
The time zones could be done provincially, with the Western Cape and Northern Cape an hour behind the other provinces. This would result in a time line that starts at Grootrivier in the south and ends at the Botswana border near Kuruman in the north.
The practical effect of this division would be for the eastern provinces to keep their present winter times and to advance the clocks in the summer, and for the western provinces to retain their current summer settings and to put back the clocks in the winter. (This has been successfully done in Namibia.)
The benefits of maximising the daylight usage are clear — Durban gets to use the best hours of its summer days, and Cape Town gets to see the sun at a more reasonable hour in winter.
The object of daylight saving is not for the elite to watch more cricket. It must benefit the population at large. The big winners would be Western Cape commuters and schoolchildren, who would receive a quality-of-life boost in winter.
Business would adjust to the one hour later start in the west as it does in other countries with more than one time zone, minimising any cost implications. Nationally, we would benefit by the better use of resources such as electricity and bandwidth.
Daylight saving in a single time zone is a non-starter. Having two time zones will be a complication, but a worthwhile one. Let’s lobby government to look at it. — Johan van de Pol, Randburg
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Ten other Commandments for Cosatu
So much needs adding to Ashwin Desai’s advice to Cosatu (”All aboard the gravy train”, December 18) that the best way to make some points is to adopt his format, with amendments. After all, even the Bible finds room for two versions of the Ten Commandments.
Commandment 1: Understand that you never bring about any change without political power: the other guys have it and intend to keep it.
Commandment 2: Quit the tripartite alliance soon. Stop kidding yourselves it is helping you. It is a trap.
Commandment 3: Form a new party of the left. Do not say that is difficult. Re-read Commandment 1.
Commandment 4: Forget Desai’s bad advice about ”the ideologically weak not inheriting the Earth”. You should know by now that ideology is a dead duck. Nothing will work for you except what you can promise people and convince them you can deliver.
Commandment 5: Avoid all Desai’s fanciful talk of ”wielding the power of the state to re-imagine a programme of nationalisation and radical distribution of wealth”. It hasn’t worked anywhere for long and certainly won’t now.
Commandment 6: Take Desai’s excellent advice to develop a programme that becomes the general interest of society. If you cannot work out what that is, you already have no chance.
Commandment 7: Get some professional skills and communicators on your side. You are trying to win over a broad range of people, not Marxist categories, and there is a right and wrong way to talk to them.
Commandment 8 and 9: These are to reinforce 6 and 7. Stop backing naff candidates for leadership and talk a better game than ”revolution”. It is 2007, not 1917. Move on.
Commandment 10: Realise the ANC is the problem, not the solution. It is going to be difficult to beat it, but that is the task. You may have more friends than you imagine. The longer you take to start, the longer it will take to do. — Paul Whelan, Umhlanga
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In brief
I am a web surfer and cricket enthusiast who navigated your website looking for a South African take on the cricket series with India. I was much entertained by your columnist, Tom Eaton. Though I don’t always agree with his views, his prose is most colourful. I have become something of a wannabe. — Prashant Raghavan
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As a graduate student of South African labour history and policy, I like to peruse the Mail & Guardian for news on developments in this area. I am often disappointed. The M&G should devote more space to exploring issues of labour and union politics. The paper positions itself as a politically progressive publication — what better way to fulfil this ideal than to report on the injustices of the present neoliberal regime, the privations it exacts on the working-poor majority and the steps that labour organisations are taking to mitigate its negative effects? — Jason Hickel
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My wife and I persuaded friends from the United States to visit us. It was an attempt to show them that South Africa was getting it right. We toured Jo’burg and Cape Town. They were in awe that everything worked and that the road network was incomparable to any other in Africa. We managed to escape any signs of crime and xenophobia. But when we bid them farewell, tragedy struck. Their luggage was broken into at OR Tambo International. What a shame! There go two tourists. And they won’t be telling their friends about the nice things they saw in South Africa. — Nurudeen Shotubo, Secunda