South Africans have every reason to be concerned about the latest crime-trends report and the government’s response to the figures, says Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille.
”There can be no doubt, however much government’s office-bearers try to play them down, that the statistics portray a society in which crime is endemic, violent and unrelenting,” she said in her weekly newsletter, published on Friday on the DA’s SA Today website.
Crime had increased in 56% of all categories — most notably murder, culpable homicide, robbery, car theft, stock theft and drug-related crimes.
”If we consider two related aspects of the statistics — the society they describe and the government’s response to that description — we have every reason to be concerned about the future.”
No area or community in South Africa was spared.
”While crime is highest in the cities, attacks in rural areas have increased by 25%. Affluent neighbourhoods have suffered double- and even triple-figure increases in aggravated robberies … while in the words of Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula, poorer communities ‘experience more violent crimes than wealthier ones’.”
Alarming as the figures were, they did not tell the full story.
”The DA contends the statistics indicate how many crimes are reported — usually for insurance purposes — rather than those that actually occur.”
It was important to note how the government had responded to the latest crime figures.
”Bluntly put: there seems no real sense of urgency or crisis at the highest levels,” Zille said.
The government had ”juggled” some figures to suggest certain categories of crime were diminishing; displaced responsibility for crime prevention to citizens; and had blamed sociological factors, particularly South Africa’s traumatic apartheid past, for the crime epidemic.
”The runaway crime … offers abundant proof of the denialism that characterises the Mbeki presidency.
”As with the other critical areas of our national life where government has failed — the HIV/Aids pandemic, the meltdown in Zimbabwe and the state’s diminished capacity to deliver basic services — our rulers prefer to regard the problem as perceptual, not actual.
”Rather than confront the facts, it seeks rather to take refuge in the failures of the past; or to list the shortcomings of the victims; or to hide behind vaguely worded promises for renewal.”
Zille said a ”conspicuous sign” of withering faith in both the government’s capacity and in the security forces was the disturbing rise in vigilantism across South Africa.
”Increasingly, communities — such as in Lentegeur, Mitchells Plain, last month — are taking the law into their own hands, administering rough justice to alleged perpetrators.
”This should be a loud wake-up call to government both to take charge and to listen to the very people for whom it likes to claim it speaks,” she said. — Sapa