DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: Crime Down, But Not Out

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gumisai Mutume

JOHANNESBURG, May 12 1998 (IPS) - While crime levels have begun to take a downward spiral in South Africa, experts say there is still no cause for celebration.

According to the South Africa Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) in its latest publication ‘Fast Facts’, levels of crime have declined in the country since 1996, but there was a substantial increase in crime between 1975 and 1995.

Crime remains one of the greatest challenges facing President Nelson Mandela’s government. Investments, business confidence, reconstruction and development programmes have all been scuppered by an uncontrollable crime wave.

The provision of housing, education, job creation and crime, according to the opposition Democratic Party, will be the major issues during South Africa’s next general elections.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) government attributes the upsurge in crime since it took over the reigns of power in 1994 to third force elements bent on destabilising the country’s first Black government.

According to statistics, South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of murder for a country not in a war. Compared to a world average of 5.5 to 100,000 people in 1994, South Africa’s murder rate was 45 per 100,000.

The South African Police services however, say that in 1996, 25,700 murders were reported, a three percent drop from the number reported the previous year.

There is an extremely high incidence of rape in South Africa, with police saying a woman is raped every 18 minutes or so in the country. South Africa was one of the countries studied by the United Nations Commission for Human Rights Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy. She presented her report on the country in 1996.

SAIRR attributes the high rate of crime in South Africa to a police force that is understaffed and badly trained, and which concentrates on crime prevention and visible policing, rather than detective work.

“Only if the proportion of crimes solved and successfully prosecuted is increased will criminals begin to get the message that crime does not pay,” says Martin Sconteich of SAIRR.

For example, while the number of reported rape cases increased more than 160 percent between 1988 and 1996, the number of cases which went to court fell by 28 percent and less than a third of these prosecutions were successful.

According to Graeme Simpson of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, if there is no political action, crime will only destabilise this Southern African nation.

But South Africa’s politicians seem to be running out of steam. Periodically, a new anti-crime drive is launched in the country.

Last May, Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi, lifted a three-year moratorium on police recruitment and announced that more than 5000 additional persons would be employed to bolster the police force.

In September 1997, the department of correctional services opened a state-of-the-art prison, ‘Cmax’, the first closed maximum security unit in a country where on average 1,000 prisoners escape annually.

But commentators say unless the huge economic disparities between the rich and the poor, and unemployment rates as high as 40 percent are dealt with, South Africa will not be able to find a sustainable solution to crime.