The area where I live has been hit relentlessly for 6 months by a syndicate of robbers who attack at 3 and 4 in the morning using the same modus operandi every time. They watch people closely; know their movements; know when the alarms are on or off, and steal electronic goods. The police patrols but that means nothing because when a case is opened, it is invariably not pursued. The offenders know the drill and don't give a toss about being charged, tried and jailed.
So the recent crime statistics are not a surprise to anybody. Everybody in SA has a story, whether you live in poor or upmarket residential areas. The main point is this - the South African Police Services are useless. They must rank with the worst in the world alongside their disastrous figures of failure. It is obvious why the Western Cape, the best-run province in the country, has the highest murder rate, having increased by 12.8% since last year.
Aggravated robbery is up by 16.7%, car theft by 3.3%, home robbery by 2% and drug-related crime by 4.1%. These percentages translate into hideous numbers but they also hide a bigger story - that hundreds of crimes are simply not reported, and more seriously that the Western Cape is deliberately ignored in the provision of adequate police resources to bring down crime.
Police Services are a national competence and there is much reason to believe that SAPS under-serve the Western Cape for deeply political reasons. The ANC government wants the Western Cape to fail and Mr Surve's newspapers will serve their purposes well (see Cape Argus on 20th September).
Attracting huge swathes of economic refugees, who ironically escape from the badly run ANC municipalities and provinces in the Eastern Cape and elsewhere, the Democratic Alliance government has to provide police services to a constantly moving target with a metro police force that cannot match the resources of the SAPS. Tik on the Cape Flats is a social problem of epic proportions yet very little is done to combat the scourge and the wide-scale gangsterism associated with drug dealers.
Chandre Gould from the Institute of Security Studies religiously reminds us in the Mail and Guardian that we should not forget the origins of crime under apartheid, which cultivated disrespect for the rule of law and the culture of impunity and which will be with us for a long time to come. This argument no longer holds any muster given the state of the police services since 1994. We can harp on incessantly of National Party abuse of the police, post-apartheid SAPS under police commissioner Jackie Selebi was probably the worse we have seen it since the abolition of apartheid.
Reading Marianne Thamm's book, To Catch a Cop one is exposed to the dark underbelly of crime, extortion, bribery and corruption perpetrated by embedded and interconnected networks with the criminal underworld that make the apartheid police look like a tea party. In this book the seat of crime is our international airport. Top management, police, security, businesses, gangsters, and politicians are involved in a web of intrigue that will make for a movie of epic proportions.
Everybody should read this book to understand why we cannot extricate ourselves from this cesspit of illegal money changing hands, of the smuggling of contraband, diamonds, and foreign currency, even entanglements with brothels and human trafficking.
Who cares about robbery and assault when you can play such games with the big guys? Who cares that Richard Mdluli was appointed to a senior position in Crime Intelligence with serious charges of murder, kidnapping, and assault and a string of other charges? South Africa is a haven for criminal mafia from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and other African countries. These people easily suck up to government, realizing that officials elected or otherwise are eminently bribable.
There is no political will to deal with crime - clear and simple - because crime pays! We fail to do even the simplest of things to solve crime. To quote a sms from a reader, named Sibusiso: "Crime remains stubbornly high because: the mechanisms to reduce it are not working; the police are complicit in crime; people don't help police; police are not using technology to capture, record, disseminate and deal with crime and criminals and not make crime reports transparent (sic)."
If ordinary people like Sibusiso know what is needed to improve policing, why not the police? Since Meyer Khan was recruited from big business to apply his considerable skills to setting the police straight, and since Business Against Crime has invested considerable resources into technology to equip police better, SAPS has gone downhill from there. And, the big question we need to as President Jacob Zuma, is WHY?
Rhoda Kadalie
This article first appeared in Die Burger.
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