The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

On my way home from gym [a 30 minute run] this Sunday evening, a bumped into a colleague who told me he had hired 4 DVDs and was determined to stay at home the entire night to watch them.

At the shop I bought a newspaper, and the front page article in the Sunday Independent was a feature on crime by Eleanor Momberg: "South Africans are increasingly terrorised and traumatised as criminals arm themselves to the teeth." See, the idea of shooting on sight of our new commissioner means that criminals will also up their game. They will also become more aggressive, more trigger happy. Antony Altbeker said once that the reason the cash in transit security guards don't arm themselves with machine guns was to stem an arms race. There is an unspoken treaty between the police and criminals. If one escalates the intensity of their actions, so does the other. This eventually spills over onto the general public. Do we really want rocket launchers on public highways, in shopping malls?

Meanwhile, without raw statistics [something you can imagine the committee organising the 2010 World Cup, and many stakeholders would want kept under wraps]Momberg investigated one police station in particular. At Lyttelton police station there was a 350% increase in robberies with a weapon other than a firearm 'between 2008 and the first 6 months of this year'. In the same article Hollard Insurance is cited as claiming 30% of all crime is 'violent'. Further evidence of the trend towards more serious crimes, and criminals is the number of lifers - prisoners serving life terms for serious crimes. There are currently 8000 lifers. 27% of prison populations include sentences of 10 years or more. Trauma counsellors case loads in the past month have doubled [according to Barabara Louw at Inter Trauma Nexus.}

While I have been watching television, stuff like THERE'S A GIRL IN MY SOUP, and DOUBLE JEOPARDY, there are areas of Johannesburg without power, with no municipal services to speak of. How do these people feel each passing minute? In winter their misery must be intensely frustrating, particularly in the most destitute of areas.

I've previously mentioned that 3 syndicates in Johannesburg have hijacked as many as 130 buildings. Over a period of time, these condemned sites basically rot as sewage etc. becomes dysfunctional.

Is there any surprise then that those who can hide, ensconced in the fantasy and escapism of movies, because the dark, brooding reality a few kilometres away is just too horrible to contemplate? Is there any surprise that those who eek out a living in horrific conditions are eager to spend their rage and fury on apparently unsuspecting victims? As economic conditions worsen, crime will worsen.

Meanwhile, according to Hollard Insurance, a burglary is happening somewhere in South Africa, every 2 minutes.