And it’s more unsolvable than most people think
Let’s start thin slicing* with the most obvious question: If you’ve got a country with an incredibly high crime rate, the answer is easy isn’t it? Just put more policemen on the streets and improve your policing, right?
First mistake. Even with better policing, you’ve already got the world’s top 5 per capita prison population. Thus BEFORE you improve your policing, you need to have a system in place that can prosecute massive amounts of captured felons, and you have to get cracking building A LOT more prisons. Even so, throwing people in jail is treating the symptoms. It is not a solution to why people are turning to crime in the first place.
Antony Altbeker, in his book ‘A Country At War With itself’, suggests that while South Africa’s prison population is a gargantuan 162 000, space needs to be built for perhaps as many as 500 000 individuals. Altbeker also quotes a figure of 2.5 million arrests in a single year (by the South African Police Services).
Altbeker estimates that perhaps 1 man out of 30 - on average - commits either a murder, rape or armed robbery in a given year in South Africa. That means in every classroom in every school in the country, there is a good chance that it is being occupied by a murderer or rapist or potential robber.
So begins the dilemma South Africa faces as it tries to bring its crime statistics to a more reasonable number. Because right now South Africans are per capita the third highest murdering nation in the world (only El Salvador and Sudan are worse), and more worryingly, South Africa has the most violence associated with crime.
Technology
Some experts argue that the answer to any crime problem is improving technology. Set up cameras, alarm and tracking systems. But the results, where the sheer volume of crime is so enormous, can be counterintuitive. Whereas car theft once allowed criminals access to their targets that didn’t involve the criminal coming face to face with the owner of this vehicle, sophisticated alarm systems now, in many cases, require the owner of the vehicle to be present in order for the would-be-thief to gain possession.
This remains the reason why security guards present at cash in transit heists have not been allowed to weaponise beyond pistols. Were these armed guards to carry automatic weapons in public, their assailants would be forced to compensate. The grim reality is that if the decision is to target a cash-in-transit consignment, the armed robber must now commit murder as well. Thus the guard is a sitting duck whose presence merely begs the question: “Do you really want the money badly enough to murder me for it?”
To increase the security of these units is to induce an arms race within an urban community. And other scenarios bring about the same result: an unavoidable escalation. Security systems in cars transform car theft to hijacking with some unpleasant criminal side-effects: kidnapping, rape, murder etc.
In Johannesburg, South Africa’s crime capital, residents have erected prison like fortresses with electrified perimeter fencing. Once again, since would-be burglars cannot gain access to a property, they need to engage the occupant face to face, and then force the occupant to provide access. Hence, a high percentage of murders (including the recent murder of South African musician Lucky Dube), assaults and hijackings occur in the driveways of residences.
Vehicle tracking systems and technology used to lock stolen cell phones effectively make the stolen loot worthless, and thus cause the sheer volume of criminality to increase.
In his book ‘A Country At War With Itself’ Antony Altbeker writes sensibly that technology is most effective when applied to the setup and maintenance of a national database of offenders, and in developing the forensic capability to process and prosecute criminals once caught. In South Africa criminals are caught but often released based on a lack of evidence (AKA a lack of an organized database). Even so, successful policing means that while stolen loot is rescued (or rendered useless), poor families everywhere remain starving around the clock, tending to stimulate crime all over again. This is a serious negative side-effect.
Immigrants
Many South Africans lay the blame for consistently high crime figures at the door of immigrants, many of them illegal migrants from neighboring African countries like Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Although some high profile crimes have been perpetrated by illegal aliens, the ‘immigrant issue’ does not provide an answer for South Africa’s truly horrific statistics. 40 murders a day. Immigrants in other countries (the UK, the USA etc) do not necessarily form the bulk of those countries prison populations.
Poverty
Eight million children survive on government grants in South Africa. For every tax payer, there are two people claiming benefits, and so, poverty persists.
Many South Africans explain the high crime figures at Saturday afternoon barbeques by pleading the countries high poverty figures, and indeed the incentive to steal, the temptation to engage in criminal activities can only be increased if one’s daily circumstances are very uncomfortable.
It must be remembered though that the greatest victims of crime are also the poor, who struggle to provide security for themselves in shacks, and in poorly lit areas. However, this cannot be the complete solution to our problem. There are countries far poorer than South Africa, for example neighboring Lesotho and Zimbabwe, and neither of these countries have anything resembling South Africa’s crisis of crime.
AIDS is a disease that exacerbates an already desperate situation for the countries poor. It becomes a case of poor parents dying and leaving starving children behind, whom grandparents must raise. Finally the absence of adults means that youngsters must find a way to survive. This begins in a vacuum of values and discipline, naturally stimulated by simple survival instincts, which may start with stealing to feed oneself.
Historical Legacy
Digging deeper, there does appear to be a precedent for violence. Going back hundreds of years through South Africa’s turbulent history, black tribes slaughtered bushmen, followed by the British who wrested the country from the Dutch and the natives in the Anglo Boer War. The National party used violence to crush and repress the majority of South Africans for decades, until the ANC took on the ‘struggle’, engaging in terrorism to make the country ungovernable. Many inhabitants have learned over the years that forcing one’s way is the way to get what one wants. This destructive legacy cannot be underestimated.
Inequality
South Africa has one of the world’s highest Gini coefficients (a measure of inequality). While this is undoubtedly a factor, other countries like Brazil have similar figures, but far lower crime statistics. Thus inequality may be an important part of a mixture of other important factors.
Repressed Culture Shock
The majority of black people in South Africa were deprived of jobs, education, freedom of movement and domicile as well as other opportunities. While these opportunities and freedoms have been restored, some are being withdrawn by the previous custodians of the country. Hence, great resentments bubble under the surface, despite an appearance of harmony. It is under conditions of stress or intoxication that these resentments begin to emerge. South Africa must be unique in terms of the scope and degree that these resentments are imbued in the national psyche.
Crimes Against Women
Every 26 seconds a woman is raped in South Africa, and just under 1000 children are raped every day. South Africa also has the highest per capita rate of femicide (the killing of women) in the world at 10 per 100 000 (2005 figures). This is 1/7th the murder rate for men in South Africa, but nevertheless 3 times the world’s average killing rate for women. Rape statistics against women and children make South Africa’s murder statistics look tame by comparison. It is obvious that South Africa’s criminals are energetically and actively engaged in violent crime every single day. Bizarrely, the government does not readily admit that South Africa even faces a crime problem, or even an AIDS problem for that matter.
There may be 2 reason for this. 1) Since many of the victims of poor, it may be unspoken government policy not to save the poor, using the rationale that people are being protected in order to live out their lives where they will never have jobs. 2). The government, aware of the massive horror of the problem, do not want to cause panic in the community, or allow for a near constant stream of criticism for allowing this human attrition to continue.
What’s more, the perpetrators are usually a rejected spouse or someone otherwise intimately involved with the female in question. It does appear that South African men, feeling powerless (perhaps because they do not have money, or jobs, and even in some cases, despite these) go to extraordinary lengths to victimize those less powerful than themselves. To the extent that crimes in South Africa are perpetrated in a domestic situation, against women and children, often infants, is extremely disturbing, if only because these are virtually impossible to prevent.
Managing Criminality
We have already said that successful policing initiatives can simply displace crime. What then is a credible solution?
An interesting approach then is to manage criminality. Altbeker suggests crucially that a high crime society must be a high incarceration society. Prisons can be places of rehabilitation, instead of cesspools that corrupt criminals even further. Another tactical approach is to find a balance between security and violence. If increasing security increases violence, one must surely consider the option of not increasing security. Naturally, few would volunteer to follow this step, particularly if one has recently been a victim of violence.
“Do you build a bridge or a moat?” Altbeker asks at one point in his book. The problem with moats is one of consequence: even ordinary, decent people become disconnected as they diminish into their fortified residences, while criminals up the ante in order to gain access, and so it becomes increasingly harder for a community to engage with itself or even look after itself. And if all the above aspects are considered, then working to uplift the overall population (through jobs, education and all the rest) may eventually be enough to tip the balance.
Economic Rescue?
So far, for the past few years, the South African economy has grown consistently, but not by much, and certainly nowhere near the rate it needs to grow to merely employ each year’s school leavers. South Africa, despite its status has Africa’s economic powerhouse, has at least 25% of its population consistently without work. This statistic could easily be 40% if one removed the vast informal sector from the equation.
Unfortunately, if the country finds itself facing a recession ? an economic condition it may be unable to avoid ? an already terrible situation could deteriorate beyond the worst nightmares. South Africa’s poor outnumber those able to make a decent living. This being the case, a revolution involving the masses of poor and working poor taking collective mass action, escalating into lootings and burning, is a horrible omnipresent possibility. South Africa must urgently face its domestic realities, in order to bring its crime crisis to a tipping point before 2010.
*Thin slicing, a term coined by Malcolm Gladwell in ‘Blink’, which means essentially making a rapid instinctual assessment on a complex issue using minimum data.
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