Crime has been hitting the front page news during the past few months. Yet it is not an area corporations are budgeting big bucks for in their corporate social investment (CSI) budgets. Safety and security only got 1% of CSI funding overall, though 26% of CSI programmes are involved in safety and security programmes, reports The CSI Handbook.
‘CSI interventions have tended to focus on private sector collaborative effort, seeking impact and engaging both the government and private sector agendas,” says the handbook. ‘This is one sector where there is little evidence of duplication of effort or reinvention.”
Projects that companies are involved in in the safety and security area include rehabilitation of prisoners, victim support and gang-related violence in schools. Companies that support safety and security include BMW, Spar, Engen, PPC Cement, Citigroup and FirstRand Group. Almost two-thirds of CSI funding, though, is channelled though Business Against Crime.
The initiative was established in 1996 in response to a request from then president Nelson Mandela, who invited business to join hands with the government in the fight against crime. The organisation supports government’s efforts by pulling in the considerable entrepreneurial, managerial and technological skills in South Africa’s business world.
One project Business Against Crime is facilitating is Tiisa Thut, which means ‘strengthening education” in southern Sotho. Its focus is on teaching conflict resolution, life skills and personal moral values at schools.
A not-for-profit organisation that is working at a grassroots level to fight crime is Gunfree South Africa. Started 10 years ago, it is a lobbying and advocacy organisation involved in reducing the number of guns in circulation among members of society and helping end gun violence in the country. It has played an important role in raising awareness about the negative impact of guns on our society.
Judy Bassingthwaite, director of Gunfree SA, believes South Africans will only feel safer and live quality lives ‘when we live in a gun-free society.
‘We have to be bold in order to challenge and speak out against gun violence, which is plaguing our communities and families,” she said. ‘We will continue to mobilise grassroots communities to speak up for themselves against gun violence.”
The organisation works with 250 service providers — among them community police forums, neighbourhood watches, victim empowerment and social development volunteers and youth activists.
The organisation believes that violence has a negative impact on poverty, especially in urban townships, because it results in the loss of lives of breadwinners, further fragmenting poor families.
‘If the life of a breadwinner is lost, the cycle of poverty perpetuates,” said Bassingthwaite.
Gunfree SA has also set its sights on toy guns, calling for all of these guns to be banned. The organisation launched a ‘toy gun free” campaign in 2004.
‘Although not all children who have used toy guns become violent, we are calling for the banning of toy guns because most crimes in this country have been carried out with toy guns,” she said.