Quiet diplomacy is not the appropriate response from responsible citizens, writes Ferial Haffajee. ”What FNB’s detractors appear to be saying is this: we know that government is very touchy on crime, so business should just keep ploughing in the bucks and practising quiet diplomacy.” Also read Steven Friedman‘s opinion on the matter.
A woman in Enkanini, Khayelitsha, tells us this story (see page 13): ”…they [robbers] make you squat down and then they stick their fingers into your vagina to feel whether you’re hiding your money there. They hurt you and nobody helps you because they have guns …”.
Last year, our writer Hazel Makuzeni described how young men in Khayelitsha force their hands between grannies’ breasts in search of bank notes crumpled inside handkerchiefs.
We can tell thousands of stories like these.
Yet, over the past month, President Thabo Mbeki and national police commissioner Jackie Selebi, in an orchestrated public relations effort, told us that crime had been whittled down to manageable levels and that the only thing that is out of control is our perception of the problem.
This message (that we are on top of things) has seeped into the criminal justice system so that one can read of prosecutors who postpone cases of heinous crimes to take tea breaks, and of police officers who keep complainants waiting as they lunch over fried chicken, and who often fail to carry out the most basic tasks required for effective crime-busting.
There are good and great apples in the ranks of the prosecutorial and police services, but on the whole the system is not working at the speed and efficiency it needs to. Yet we are told that it’s all a matter of perception.
Citizens need to speak up against this nonsense and show, every day and in meaningful ways, that crime will erode our democracy if it is not given the requisite attention and applied political will.
It’s not that the government cannot do it: former Scorpions boss Bulelani Ngcuka, former safety and security minister Steve Tshwete and former justice minister Penuell Maduna all put up a pretty formidable showing of zero tolerance, and they got results.
What FNB’s detractors appear to be saying is this: we know that government is very touchy on crime, so business should just keep ploughing in the bucks and practising quiet diplomacy. This mantra of constructive engagement has never been very helpful, as we know from our past.
In this parlance, we should just be good ”stakeholders” and trust the ”process”. But good citizenship demands more of us; we must learn to speak in a progressive voice about the dangers of crime, of its impact on dignity and on freedom.
We are not ciphers to whom a crime-free South Africa will be ”delivered by a national democratic revolution”.
This is not an issue only for the affluent; it is far more an issue for the poorest of the poor. And the more people speak up for democratic space and for freedom from strip searches, virtual curfews, razor wires and private security guards, the better.
FNB was doing the right thing; it’s a pity the lily-livered won the day.