Just over 1900 American troops killed in Iraq over a 2, or is it now a 3 year period?
In South Africa, 18 793 were murdered in the fiscal year (sounds like an accounting exercise doesn't it) April 2004, to March 2005. There were also over 24 000 attempted murders, and over 55 000 rapes. Nice place for a holiday eh?
The point is, the war in Iraq should not garner as much of our attention as it does. (In fairness though, the number of civilian dead in Iraq are probably at least ten times the number of military casualties). There are other places in the world that need the focus of our help and compassion.
So let's look at South Africa.
There are two sides to every story, so I am going to attempt to portray both sides.
In order to overthrow the oppressive and evil minority government, black youth were taught about civil unrest, how to burn schools, or buses, or to do loud and sometimes violent protests (think burning and looting)until the government listened. When government didn't heed calls to amend unjust laws (like the Group Areas Act), or lower the price of school books, or be more lenient in terms of passrates, government offices or bars were bombed, or schools were burned down.
The white government yielded, in part because it was virtually bankrupt, and in part because almost everyone knew we could no longer go down this road.
Today, where the government is truly of the people, those same people who so successfully terrorised the government, now simply terrorise neighborhoods, to get what they want.
Things might have been different if the apostles of apartheid had not totally excluded the poor, and victimised them. If they had collabored better things would be better, but they created a very disparate social system, and those holes are still being stitched together. By locating the poor African populations far away from white cities or enclaves, the country basically created one of the worst Gini coefficients anywhere.
The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality - a ratio of haves to have nots.
Brazil has one of ther worst, Nambia is pretty bad too at around 72.2, and South Africa's gini, although his demeanour has improved from 59,3 to 57,8, he's still pretty nasty as gini's go.
What's interesting is the figure for sub-Saharan Africa is also around 72, which hardly makes sense as the whites left ages ago. So how to explain it? The only way to explain it is that the rich black bureacrats learned the tecniques of the rich colonialists who came before them, and simply replaced them at the game of playing elites. The figure appears to show they learnt a lot from their former masters, and seem to have come up with even better tricks of their own.
If you want to create civil unrest, allow a large population to simmer and fester around a small, productive enclave of wealth.
If you want to solve crime, get the wealthy involved in creating wealth and value in local communities, but not necessarily their own. And apply heavy fines for cronyism.
South Africa still struggles with murders
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 Posted: 2258 GMT (0658 HKT)
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) -- Ten-year-old Marissa Naidoo, who was kidnapped from her primary school, murdered and stuffed in a suitcase, was buried Wednesday as the government released statistics showing that 51 South Africans are killed in an average day.
Marissa's murder, by a man who fooled teachers that he was a family acquaintance, sent shock waves through this crime-hardened nation.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula prefaced his introduction of the annual police report by grieving publicly with parents "forced to weep when the lives of their loved ones are taken away under dastardly conditions."
"For a long time to come, we are going to be losing people in South Africa in that fashion," Nqakula lamented.
Eleven years after the advent of multiracial democracy, South Africa remains one of the world's most crime-ridden societies, a legacy of years of violent suppression during the apartheid era.
Nonetheless, the government has made big strides toward its target of cutting violent crime by 7 percent per year.
The police report said that 18,793 people were murdered in the fiscal year April 2004 to March 2005, down 5.2 percent from the 19,824 reported the previous year.
The report said there were 24,516 attempted murders -- down 18.5 percent on 2003/2004. Police officials said this was largely thanks to a government amnesty which persuaded people to surrender some 90,000 unlicensed firearms.
Reported rape rose by 4.5 percent to 55,114 cases, and indecent assault was also higher than the previous year.
Nqakula said this was partly due to the fact that increasing numbers of women felt sufficient confidence in the police to report the crime -- even though the reported cases are still believed to be the tip of the iceberg.
Assault, aggravated robbery, arson, house and vehicle burglaries all fell, as did carjackings.
"The future to me looks very rosy in terms of the fight against crime and criminality in South Africa," Nqakula told a press conference.
He said a "tremendous change" had taken place in safety in security in the past five years and that South Africa did not deserve its international reputation as one of the world's crime capitals.
"There is crime everywhere in the world, it is just that ... some people do not go to other countries and talk about crime in their country."
At the birth of its new democracy in 1994, South Africa had the world's highest homicide rate of 67 per 100,000 -- largely as a result of murders in the country's impoverished and overcrowded townships.
The rate fell to 40 per 100,000 in 2004, behind Colombia at 67 per 100,000 and Jamaica at 59 per 100,000.
But this compares to rates of some 6 per 100,000 in the United States and 3 per 100,000 in Britain, according to figures from the international police organization Interpol.
"South Africa is really off the scale compared to most other countries," said Anton De Plessis, head of the crime and justice program at the Institute for Security Studies.
But he cautioned that many developing countries -- including violent societies such as Somalia and Afghanistan -- do not report their crime figures to Interpol and so the published statistics do not reflect international reality.
"But what is positive for South Africa is that the situation is getting better," he said, pointing out that violent crime has fallen by some 40 percent since 1994.
Most murders and violent assaults in South Africa are committed by acquaintances or partners of the victims.
In the case of Marissa Naidoo, the man pretended that he had come to collect the child from her classroom in the Johannesburg suburb of Benoni because her father had been arrested. He subsequently demanded a ransom for her.
The man, identified as Raveen Rampersadh, jumped to his death from his apartment balcony as police tried to storm the building.
Marissa's body was found in a suitcase. Initial reports said that she had suffocated.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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