CAPE TOWN LETTER:THE NUMBER of murders in South Africa in the 12 months to March: 15,940. The number of armed robberies over the same period: 101,463. The number of cars hijacked: 10,700.
You may be surprised to hear this, but these crime figures just released by South Africa’s government statisticians represent a significant reduction in their class when compared to those released the year before.
After years of struggling to control a crime rate that has made South Africa one of the most dangerous places in the world to live, a beleaguered public is being told the tide is slowly beginning to turn in the fight against criminality.
Aside from murder, armed robbery and car hijackings, the crimes of attempted murder, house robbery, common assault and arson have also decreased over the same period. Some, indeed, are down by a significant amount.
For instance, car hijackings – a crime the international media has always liked to focus on when highlighting how dangerous South Africa is – were down by 23.6 per cent on the 2010 figure, and are at their lowest level since 2003-2004.
While the murder rate is down only 6.5 per cent on the previous year, the 15,940 figure is the lowest recorded by the post- apartheid South African police service (although it is still 4½ times the international average of seven per 100,000 people).
The murder figure for last year also pales in comparison to the 27,000 murders that occurred in South Africa in 1995-1996.
This is a whopping 40.7 per cent decrease over a period when the population has grown by 28 per cent to just over 49 million.
According to the crime situation report, experts would have expected murder to increase during such a period of rapid population growth and urbanisation, as it is usually associated with unemployment, poverty and increases in social crimes.
“Murder, being the one crime trend that should virtually not be influenced by over- or under- reporting and/or the non- registration of cases, is consequently believed to be the most consistent indicator of increases and decreases in crimes,” said the report.
So what new police tactics are responsible for securing these crime rate reductions? Well, it appears that a huge increase in spending and “extremely high levels of police visibility” have been the order of the day since 2009, when the country staged general elections and the soccer Confederation Cup.
This approach was carried forward to cover the Fifa soccer World Cup last year, and it contributed to a relatively crime-free tournament.
In addition, the police have instigated a crackdown on robberies with the help of the public, whom they have been asking to be vigilant and report suspicious activity, and the private security industry, whose manpower is now about twice that of the South African police.
The reduction in robberies has had a knock-on effect on the murder and attempted murder rates, because in South Africa, where violence can quickly move to the next level, victims of robbery are more frequently killed and assaulted by the perpetrators than in other countries.
Policing, however, continues to extract a high price from those men and women in the front line.
During the period under review, 94 police officers were killed in the line of duty, a slight improvement on the 100 officers, on average, who have been gunned down in each of the previous five years.
South Africa’s police chief Bheki Cele has repeatedly told officers that when faced with armed criminals who refuse to surrender, they should not hesitate to protect themselves.
“Your job is to arrest criminals and, if someone makes your job difficult, make sure it is not you that will be killed,” he told mourners at a police funeral in August.
This sanctioned “shoot-to-kill” policy, which was first touted publicly in 2009, may well be a contributing factor to the horrific tally of civilian deaths attributed to police recently.
Last year 566 South Africans lost their lives as a result of police action.
While most of these were suspects shot dead during arrest, 16 were innocent members of the public who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One area of concern that South Africa continues to struggle with is sexual offences. The number of reported rapes increased from 55,097 in 2009-2010 to 56,272 – or, to put it more starkly, 154 rapes are reported nationwide each day.
When one considers that the vast majority of rapes are never reported, according to international experts, the scale of the epidemic is mind-boggling.
