Crime is a crisis, not just a problem, and the African National Congress (ANC) should pay attention to it, said the Sunday Times in a front-page editorial.
The newspaper said that the ANC leaders, getting together next weekend for their regular national executive committee meeting, needed to put the country’s out-of-control crime situation on their agenda.
The newspaper, in its unusual front-page editorial, said that ”the ruling party and the government it controls merely see crime as a problem, not the crisis that it is.
”Like the proverbial ostrich, they refuse to accept that this country is under siege from criminals. They seem to believe that it is a problem affecting pampered whingers in Sandton, Durban North and Claremont, forgetting that the residents of places like Tembisa, Manenberg and Clermont are as much at the receiving end.”
The newspaper called the crime statistics for the past year ”horrendous”, with nearly 19 000 people murdered, nearly 55 000 raped and almost 120 000 violent robberies, and said the government’s response was a gross dereliction of duty.
”This newspaper would like to suggest that, in-between the mandatory back-stabbing sessions at this weekend’s gathering, the ANC’s high-ups reserve some time for an in-depth discussion on this crisis.
”If they do not do so, it will confirm our worst fears: that they do not care.”
On the same page, the Sunday Times reported that thousands of criminal cases were collapsing because the work on forensic evidence linking criminals to cases was not being done.
It reported that 427 319 cases remained unsolved, many due to the lack of forensic work. These included 183 988 murders, attempted murders, rapes and assaults from April 2005 to March 2006.
Forensic specialists at laboratories in Cape Town and Johannesburg told the newspaper that the main reason for the backlog was that two machines, worth almost R100-million, could not be used due to lack of staff and skills.
Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi denied that the forensics crisis was behind the unsolved cases, saying the machines were ”working like a bomb” and that some of the machines not in use were old.
Crisis
There is a crisis at South Africa’s forensic science laboratories, which are not adequately staffed or funded and which face massive backlogs, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said in a statement on Sunday.
DA safety and security spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard was reacting to Sunday newspaper reports that a staggering 427 319 police cases remained unsolved, many because work on crucial evidence like DNA, ballistics, blood tests and other forensic material linking criminals to crimes was not being done.
Kohler-Barnard said that recently senior officials in the Department of Safety and Security intervened to refuse the DA permission to visit South Africa’s three main forensic science laboratories.
”So quite clearly the department has something to hide,” said Kohler-Barnard.
The DA had already submitted a number of questions to the minister of safety and security about the conditions in the laboratories and this week she would submit more.
Stubbornly high statistics
Stubbornly high crime statistics show South Africa has a long way to go to fight one of the prime deterrents to much-needed investment, business leaders said on Thursday.
The latest crime data, released by the police on Wednesday, showed a slight decline in murders and other crimes but an alarming rise in others, such as armoured-car heists.
The contrasting figures pose a tough challenge for authorities as they try to lure tourists and foreign investors, especially ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa.
”I have a real feeling that the growth in criminal activity will keep rising,” said Siphiwe Nzimande, CEO of Business Against Crime, a privately funded group based in Johannesburg.
”If that continued to be the pattern over some years it means South Africa [would] become a less safe place to do business. We need to fix it.”
Rape and murder rates dropped between April 2005 and March 2006, but are still far short of the 7% to 10% annual decreases targeted by government, police data showed.
But at the same time, robberies targeting security vehicles moving huge sums of cash increased by 74,1% to more than one a day. There was also a 32% jump in armed robberies of shopping malls and retail outlets over the same period.
Growing pressure to address crime — cited in several reports as one of the main worries for investors — has caught the attention of President Thabo Mbeki, who has agreed to work with Business Against Crime after a recent spate of violent attacks on shopping malls. — Sapa, Reuters