COVID 19 and SA’s murders
58 people died in South Africa today. And yesterday. And tomorrow, 58 more will die. I am not talking about Covid- 19 (Corona virus) deaths. I am referring to the number of people murdered in South Africa every day.
Covid-19, rightly, is regarded and treated as an international crisis of potential magnitude, even though the latest figures indicate that it might have peaked, with the number of new incidences dropping significantly. With about 2500 deaths so far, world stock exchange prices have declined remarkably – described by some as the worst since the 2008 financial crisis, with some investors fearing an imminent world-wide recession.
Why, despite not one case of Covid-19 in SA at the time of writing, is everyone in the country on high alert while many South Africans and the government remain unconcerned about the national scourge of murder that far, far outweighs the COVID-19 threat?
BusinessTech reported the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) July 2019 report said that more than 486 260 South Africans were murdered between 1994 and 2017. Since then, the murders have numbered 20306 in 2018 and 21 022 in 2019. This brings the total to 526,588.
South Africa (in 2017) had one of the highest murder rates in the world at 36 per 100,000 people. The UNDOC Report says that, contrary to popular perception, …this is by no means a post-apartheid phenomenon. The country’s official homicide rate has been well above the current global average since at least the 1920s.