Monograph 47: Poor Safety: Crime and Policing in South Africa`s Rural Areas, By Eric Pelser, Antoinette Louw and Sipho Ntuli

Reflections on South Africa’s membership of the ICC regime, and considers the domestic steps the country has taken in its relationship with the ICC

While crime in the rural areas is commonly thought to be less extensive than in the more developed urban areas, surveys indicate that people living in rural areas are victimised at rates similar to those of their urban counterparts. While the overall chances of becoming a victim may be similar, the impact of victimisation may be more severe in rural areas. Without access to social services and other support, the rural poor are the least able to deal with the impact of crime.

The research conducted for this monograph surveyed 756 inhabitants of 40 predominantly African rural settlements in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, the Northern Province, the North-West and the Free State. Of these respondents, 56.9% were victims of at least one crime between July 1993 and July 1998.

The most common crime was stocktheft (16.9% of the sample), with burglary and violent crime — murder, sexual assault and assault — respectively affecting 15.6% and 13.1% of the respondents.

The majority of the victims of crime believed that, with the exception of stocktheft, crime was committed by people living in their areas. Indeed, 72% of the victims of violent crime indicated that they knew their offenders — 58% by name and 14% by sight.

This may explain the relatively high rate of reporting of crime in these areas, especially the high rate of reporting to the police. These rates indicate that, despite a very limited presence and poor visibility, the police are still viewed as the primary authorities for dealing with crime in the rural areas.

However, there appears to be a general lack of confidence in the ability of the police to deal with crime and a widespread dissatisfaction with the service provided by the police. Less than a quarter of the respondents believed that the police were able to deal with crime in their areas.

This is primarily a result of the general weaknesses in policing in South Africa (limited resources, an overly centralised and bureaucratic hierarchy, a general lack of appropriate skills and training, and a dearth of managerial and investigative expertise), being compounded in the rural environment by the geographic isolation of many of these areas, the lack of infrastructure, the skewed allocation of resources and the capacity constraints experienced by both the police and the public.

Therefore, interventions aimed at enhancing the safety of people living in the deep rural areas should focus on improving policing rather than on developing the complex participatory, multi-agency social crime prevention programmes, which are either being implemented in, or planned for some of South Africa’s urban areas. The critical resources and capacity for these kinds of programmes either do not exist, or are underdeveloped in the rural areas. Interventions focused on enhancing policing are thus most likely to have the greatest impact in the short to medium term. Furthermore, improved policing is the most preferred intervention of people living in these areas.

The limited police presence and infrastructural constraints mean that most of the interaction between the police and those whom they serve, occur at the police station when assistance is sought. Thus, policing in these areas is predominantly reactive and interventions should therefore focus on improving services delivered at the community safety centre (or charge office), as well as intelligence and detective functions.

This implies amendments to current performance measurement systems, which focus largely on rates of reported crime. Measurements based on arrests and charges, as well as conviction rates for priority crimes should rather become the key to performance assessment.