SOUTH AFRICA: High-Profile Murder Sparks Debate on Violent Crime

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 30 2007 (IPS) - The murder of a world-renowned historian has jolted South Africa into confronting the reality of escalating violent crime, which is destroying the country’s social fabric and hurting its international image.

David Rattray, an Anglo-Zulu war expert, was murdered Friday near his home, just 500 metres from the spot where British troops and Zulu warriors fought in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province 128 years ago.

Police are investigating the motives for this high-profile killing. So far, nobody has been arrested in connection with the shooting of Rattray, who will be buried in South Africa Thursday.

Rattray, 49, a friend of Britain’s Prince Charles, has joined the list of the estimated 18,000 South Africans who are murdered every year – an average of about 50 a day – some over petty items like mobile phones.

Aware that the debate on crime could harm South Africa’s image as the country prepares to host the football World Cup in 2010, the government is playing down the effects of the murder.

Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told journalists Monday in Pretoria, the nation’s capital, that South Africa should not allow itself “to be paralysed by individual incidents”.

“Obviously the murder of someone of a high profile will definitely strengthen perceptions abroad about crimes in South Africa,” he said.

“The murder of Mr. Rattray puts global focus on the crimes in South Africa,” Pieter Mulder, leader of the Freedom Front Plus Party, told IPS in an interview. The Front is campaigning for the reinstatement of the death penalty, abolished in 1995, as a deterrent to violent crime.

“In three years, 2.5 million people fell victim to violent crimes such as murder, attempted murder, and robbery at private homes. This means more than 848,000 people fall victim to violent crime in South Africa every year,” he said.

“From 1994 up to now, 272,000 people were murdered in South Africa. There is an increase of 8.3 percent in house robbery. These are the statistics of the police themselves,” Mulder said. “This means people are feeling unsafe in their homes. And this makes South Africa the most unsafe country to live in.”

Fed up with complaints about crime, safety and security, Minister Charles Nqakula was last year widely quoted by the media as saying that those who were unhappy with living in South Africa were free to leave. “Mr. Nqakula mentioned my name as one of those people,” Mulder said.

Mulder urged President Thabo Mbeki and his ministers to refrain from sending confusing messages on crime. In the same breath, he rejected Mbeki’s remark that crime rates have fallen by 10 percent since the demise of apartheid in 1994. “The world average for murder is five in every 100,000 of the population. In South Africa the figure is 40 in every 100,000. If this figure is compared to the world figures, South Africa is experiencing a very serious crime crisis which should immediately be acknowledged and addressed by government,” Mulder said.

“What is worse is that on average only 10 percent of criminal cases end up in court,” he added.

Among suggestions for addressing crime is to increase the police budget and the number of officers on the force, while also upgrading their training and providing them with the necessary logistics.

“Ministers travel in the latest Mercedes Benz. But if there’s a break-in in one’s home, police have no vehicle to transport themselves to the scene of the incident,” Mohamed Zain, a businessman in Johannesburg, told IPS in an interview.

Zain’s complaint, however, needs to be taken in context. In early January, Gauteng Province, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are located, bought 250 new vehicles to beef up crime fighting ability in the country’s wealthiest province. The vehicles are part of the plan to complement the province’s 2006-2014 safety strategy launched in September 2006.

Another strategy to fight crime is to keep youth off the street. Young people between the ages of 14 and 35 make up close to 40 percent of South Africa’s population, according to the Department of Labour.

“In South Africa, we have young people being the most affected by problems of underdevelopment, with young people constituting an estimated 70 percent of our unemployed population,” said the department in a statement this week.

The department is “enlisting (the youth) as volunteers into a diverse range of national service priorities such as the construction of houses and the provision of home-based care giving (for people living with HIV/AIDS). All the projects are crafted in a manner that ensures that upon completion, the young volunteers gain certification that is recognised under our National Qualifications Framework”.

Tourism officials also fear that the publicity around Rattray’s death could affect tourism. More than 4.6 million visitors arrived in South Africa between January and July 2006, a 15 percent increase over the same period in 2005. Statistics South Africa, a think-tank, said 20.3 percent of the visitors came from Africa and the Middle East, 11 percent from the Americas, eight percent from Asia and Australia and 3.1 percent from Europe.