Somali pirates in South Africa?

2010-11-22 08:05

There are a lot of similarities between the Somali pirates and South African society.

So much so that one can't help feeling that everything the Somalis have learnt about running a successful multi-million dollar piracy business, they could quite easily have picked up studying modern South African social history.

In the early 1990s, when the Somali state disintegrated into chaos, local fisherman had to take the law into their own hands to do something about foreign fishing boats illegally plundering their national waters. The Somalis armed themselves, attacked the fishing boats then found that they could fund their arms and ammunition supplies a lot more efficiently by actually capturing the illegal fishing boats and only giving them back when the foreign fishing companies paid a fine. Who could blame them?

Then they crossed the line. They found that the "fines" brought in more money than fishing. So, they decided to dispense with their nets and fishing rods and invest in more AK47s and RPGs.

"Capturing" turned to "hijacking" and "fines" became "ransom".

What's the connection?

Of course, they still argue that their actions are justified in terms of providing for their impoverished communities.

But, according to TV news interviews with some of those impoverished communities, there are still lots of poor, starving people in Somalia but a growing number of very rich pirates.

So, what is the connection to South Africa?

Well, back in the days of apartheid many crimes were seen by both the perpetrators and their communities as being justifiable in terms of hitting back at the white establishment.

Those involved in crime, such as housebreaking, mugging, theft, hijacking, armed robbery and so on, often had the support of significant sections their communities who protected them from the police.

Then came democracy and a lot of those people just carried on with their crime sprees, justifying their actions by talking about poverty and lack of employment.

Price fixing

On the roads, taxi drivers went on strike complaining bitterly about traffic cops unfairly stopping them for having unregistered, unroadworthy vehicles and often no drivers licences, because they argued they were in the process of earning a living. Once again, justifying breaking the law by citing poverty and the right to employment.

In the apartheid years, big, white owned, companies in South Africa benefitted from monopolies, price fixing and the existence of cartels, which the Nationalist government really didn't seem to worry about too much.

When democracy arrived and with it the Competitions Commission and the outlawing of price collusion, many of these companies resorted to all sorts of dirty tactics from using their deep pockets to simply destroy competitors, to getting more and more crafty about fixing prices and generally doing whatever it took to protect their profits.

This year alone we have seen a number of companies found guilty of price collusion with one of the biggest companies in this country, fined hundreds of millions of Rands for fixing the price of bread. I would suggest that if you took the amount of misery these illegally inflated bread prices caused, it would not even come close to the misery caused by the Somali pirates.

They are rank amateurs when compared with South Africa's crime syndicates and corporate crooks.

Becoming Somali pirates

And like the Somali pirates, there are far too many South Africans who still try to justify crime. They claim poverty, unemployment, lack of service delivery and myriad other reasons.

The point is that it has been pretty substantially proved that there is little correlation between crime and poverty. Sure, I find that hard to believe, but that's what the experts say.

The more that our government is perceived to be ineffectual when it comes to catching and punishing criminals, failing on service delivery and exacerbating unemployment, the more we will become like Somali pirates.

Some of us will start off just wanting to see justice done. We will form vigilante groups in an effort to curb crime. And the more successful we are, the more we will be tempted to cross the line and become judge, jury and executioner.

That line between being a simple fisherman trying to prevent the theft of his livelihood to a full blown Somali pirate is very, very thin.

Right now in politics, in business, in the townships and wealthy suburbs, more and more law-abiding people are starting to think like Somali Pirates.

It is a frightening situation and before it gets out of hand, something needs to be done. Starting perhaps with all of us making a commitment not to make excuses for crime. To accept that crime is wrong and never justifiable.

And to start behaving like we mean it. Not just the hijackers and housebreakers, but those of us who break the speed limit, drive recklessly, use our cell phones in our cars and screw the taxman.

Obey the law

The Automobile Association has established that 76% of South African drivers break the law every day. I wonder if those are the same 76% who complain the loudest about crime in South Africa.

And  those who argue that breaking the speed limit is hardly the same as murder or hijacking should bear in mind that every year 13 000 South Africans die on the roads because someone is speeding, driving recklessly or yakking on a cellphone. That's murder in my book.

We are a nation hell bent on becoming a bunch of Somali pirates and the only way to stop it is to start obeying the law whether we agree with it or not and even if we think it is a complete ass.

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