22 Jan 2007: ISS Today: South Africa: The Interminable Fight Against Violent Crime: A Police Responsibility?
22 January 2007: South Africa: The Interminable Fight Against Violent Crime: A Police Responsibility?
On 8 November former President PW Botha was buried in the quiet hamlet of Hoekwil, near the town of George. That same evening, just after darkness fell, I was attacked, stabbed and almost killed by three young men outside a small village shop, less than 200m from the grave. The youngest of my attackers was 16, the oldest in his early 30s. Far from being strangers, these three men had spent almost an hour in the shop talking to me, assisting me to carry tables into the shop before closing time. One had even come in to stand with me while he listened to his special song on the radio while he related how the song warmed his heart.
Although my instincts had been alerted when the three walked in that evening, I had mediated my concern, putting it down to some lurking prejudice. There was nothing that indicated that they meant any harm. We had joked, laughed about the fact that I had refused to sell cigarettes to the youngest of the three.
I walked out of the shop at half-past eight, my hands full of the papers and maps I was intending to take with me to Pretoria the next day, as I was to fly up to participate in a meeting of the Nonproliferation Council. As I walked towards my car the sound of running footsteps shocked me into the realisation that I was under attack. I shouted but was struck forcefully to the ground where the three stabbed me and tried to stifle my screams by shoving a hand into my mouth. In the struggle I managed to pull the pin from a small gadget that let off a loud alarm-like sound. It was this that frightened them off, but not before they grabbed my handbag and ripped it from my arm. When the attackers ran off I stood up and brushed a cigarette butt they had put out on my back to the ground and found my hands covered in my own blood. Their trophy, a meagre R200.
In the first few hours after the attack the most shocking thought was that the three men had tried to take my life. Their knife missed my heart by a centimetre, but had severely cut my wrist, punctured my lung and made a deep, damaging cut in my leg that would take months, probably years, to heal fully.
As I write this, I am acutely aware that my experience is no different from the thousands of South Africans who have suffered similar violent attacks and who daily have to deal with the fear that they are unsafe.
There is no question that police incompetence is largely to blame for the failure to arrest my attackers more than a month later, which gave the one man enough time to commit another crime late in December. Yet, the police cannot be blamed for the fact that so many criminals in South Africa daily cross the line from normal citizen to violent rapist and attacker. The youngest of the three, at sixteen, had never known security and love. His mother, by all accounts was negligent and frequently drunk.
While analysts frequently and tritely blame the state of violent crime on historical aberrations and failures of the criminal justice system, I cannot help believing that we are missing the point. Certainly we can lay the blame on the past, in so far as the majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by those between the ages of 18 and 30, in other words children who were born to parents whose schooling was interrupted by the 1976 uprisings, the school boycotts of the 1980s, detention, and whose families were victim of harassment by apartheid security forces. That, no doubt, will be an unpalatable argument to many. Yet, seeing the problem from this point of view is what led economist Steven Levitt to explain the high levels of violent crime that troubled the United States in the early 1990s. Indeed, such an analysis may lead us to more lasting solutions, albeit that the effect of these interventions may only be felt after several years.
Increasing the functionality of the police and criminal justice system is important, yet it will not solve the problem of insecurity and violence. Nor, in fact, is any social welfare intervention going to have any immediate results; but interventions to improve schooling, ensure the safety of children after school hours and provide state support to the large number of single mothers may show results by the time the children being born now, or who are under the age of five, are old enough to become involved in the crimes their fathers are engaged in now.
It would therefore appear that there are two main problems. The one is the unacceptable tendency of criminals to use unnecessary violence in the perpetration of their crimes. The other—and a more worrying one in my view—is the inability (or unwillingness?) on the part of the police to enforce the law when these people are caught. While a focus on social crime prevention mechanisms could help in fostering long-lasting solutions as I argued above, such efforts need to complemented by certainty of facing the law.
Postscript
Since November when the attack took place and the time of writing this article I have come to understand that the three, all who live in a nearby community, have been well-known to the police as housebreakers and violent criminals. Yet, despite the police having identified the three men shortly after the attack, none were arrested. My handbag was recovered, as was the knife with which I was stabbed, still covered with blood. The eldest of the three attackers was apprehended only about a month after my attack, after having subsequently raped a woman and stolen a firearm. Quite inexplicably a week ago he had still not been arrested, even though the police were aware of the rape and firearm theft. It was only after I pointed him out in an identity parade and had made several calls to the investigating officers and prosecutors that he was finally arrested. On 17 January, more than two months after the attack, he appeared in court for a bail hearing, the outcome of which is still uncertain.
Chandre Gould, Crime and Justice Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)
