First National Bank (FNB) will go ahead with its anti-crime campaign but at a later date, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Monday.
The bank withdrew its multimillion-rand initiative meant to pressurise President Thabo Mbeki into making crime prevention his first priority, apparently after meeting with security-cluster leaders on Friday.
The bank had planned to print 1,5-million posters, each containing a postage-paid letter addressed to The Honourable Mr TM Mbeki. South Africans were encouraged to send Mbeki their personal stories about how crime had touched their lives.
Presidential spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga has denied any intervention from Mbeki’s side.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has also denied that the government put pressure on FNB to cancel the initiative.
”I am not aware that the Presidency requested FNB to withdraw the campaign. FNB has got a right to embargo whatever campaign they see fit.
”Our view, though, is that we don’t think the campaign would have assisted anybody in the fight against crime.”
Xolisa Vapi, FNB’s head of corporate communications, says the bank will meet on Monday to review the initiative.
FNB and FNB alone
Vapi told the Mail & Guardian Online on Monday morning that a decision had been taken on Friday to ”refine the campaign”.
He said the point of the campaign was to be constructive in the fight against crime and involved getting the public to pledge their support. He said that the campaign would have worked if it had been launched on Sunday and Monday.
”But aspects [of the current campaign], however minor, undermines its positive intent.”
Vapi said he was not in a position to say what these aspects were.
”The campaign has been on the cards for a long time. It was moved to a later date because we wanted to align it with [these] positive intentions.”
Vapi said the decision to postpone the campaign was made by ”FNB and FNB alone”. He denied that they were under any pressure from the government.
FNB is owned by FirstRand, the country’s second-largest financial company.
FirstRand chief executive Paul Harris and his executive team pulled out of the campaign at 3.30pm on Friday.
Harris refused to comment on whom he had met from the Presidency, but when asked if he had discussed the campaign with the government on Friday he said: ”I don’t want to talk about who we spoke to other than to say it was a broad range of stakeholders — all people that we felt could in some way be impacted on this.”
Government spokesperson Themba Maseko said the campaign was a form of incitement against Mbeki.
”Positioning themselves as an opposition party is not appropriate … Trying to incite people to behave in a certain way towards the head of state cannot be condoned,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Solidarity accused the government of bullying FNB into withdrawing the advertisement.
Real experiences
Johan Burger, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies’s Crime and Justice Programme, said the difference between crime and the perception of crime was like the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter: ”It depends on the angle you are looking at it from”.
Burger said the public and the government were on opposite sides of this spectrum as ”no government would easily concede that crime was out of control … [but] victims would argue that it is”.
Burger said that from a research point of view, the reality lies somewhere between the two views. ”I don’t believe that crime is out of control … [because] looking at the indicators, there is a downward trend.”
”But of course, where officials and normal people miss each other is that even if there is a downward trend, [crime levels] are still extremely high.”
Burger said even though crime has consistently decreased by about 40% since 1994/1995, South Africa’s levels are still approximately eight times higher than the international norm.
Burger said the perception of the seriousness of crime in the country was not based on rumours or propaganda, but the real experiences of people in the country. He said a problem was that the ”government would like to see some appreciation of the work they are putting in, but the public feels it is far too easy to dish out appreciation because they are not as safe as before”.
”There is a feeling by the public that they are being ignored by government … [The campaign] was intended to give people a voice. It would have been extremely helpful for the government to understand people’s real experiences of crime,” Burger said.
Damaging democracy
Party spokesperson Dianne Kohler Barnard said the African National Congress’s denial of the extent of crime was damaging democracy and undermining public confidence.
Reacting to the withdrawal, Solidarity announced that it intended sending out thousands of letters from the public to Mbeki asking him to make crime prevention his first priority.
In January, crime experts and victims accused Mbeki of being out of touch with reality with his denial that crime was out of hand.
A senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, Johan Burger, said Mbeki’s statement showed he was not clued up about the experiences of ordinary people.
In 1998, 25% of respondents said in a poll they did not feel safe going out after dark in their own areas.
”In a similar poll in 2004, that figure had jumped to 58% of people who felt unsafe,” said Burger.
Mbeki said in a television interview on January 15 that it was just a perception that crime was out of control.
Most South Africans would agree, he told interviewer Tim Modise.
”It’s not as if someone will walk here to the TV studio in Auckland Park and get shot,” said Mbeki.
”That doesn’t happen and it won’t happen. Nobody can prove that the majority of the country’s 40-million to 50-million citizens think that crime is spinning out of control.”
What the advert said
”Dear President Mbeki
I am a proud but concerned South African. Proud because I live in such a wonderful democracy. Proud because my country has been recognised by the world to host the Fifa 2010 World Cup. Proud because our economy is showing exceptional growth. And proud because we showed the world that peaceful settlement can be achieved through working together.
But I am also concerned.
Concerned because even though I live in the most prosperous country in Africa, our crime rates are the highest on the continent, far outstripping the poorest African countries. Concerned because last year alone reported statistics recorded 18 528 murders, 54 926 rapes and 119 726 violent robberies.
I’m also concerned that crime is destroying our progress and threatens our dream of eliminating poverty and living in peace. As a result, the world continues to question the credibility of our progress.
Mr President. I know you love this country as much as I do, so please make crime the government’s number one priority. As a committed South African I will be right behind you — because as our nation’s history has shown, there’s nothing we can’t achieve when we work together.
Yours faithfully
Signed
PS (My personal story) … ”