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'Double murder shocked SA'
21/04/2006 15:09 - (SA)
Cape Town - Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has castigated government for refusing to acknowledge the reality of crime and not doing enough to address the issue.
President Thabo Mbeki and senior leaders of the African National Congress did not understand, because they were almost completely insulated from crime, he said in his weekly newsletter on the DA website on Friday.
Leon cited a litany of recent murders, including that of actor Brett Goldin and his friend Richard Bloom in Cape Town last weekend.
"This terrible crime has sent a shudder throughout South Africa and around the world.
"The awful reality is that Brett and Richard are not alone among the recent victims of South Africa's crime wave," he said.
'What kind of society has ours become?'
Other incidents included several people murdered in recent days in a gang war in Cape Town, last month's murder of the four-year-old granddaughter of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, the murder of renowned SABC producer Ken Kirsten, and three workers at a laundry in Vereeniging who were murdered in January and their bodies stuffed into a washing machine.
"Last week in KwaZulu-Natal, an elderly couple was attacked on their farm by a group of armed thugs who burnt the 82-year-old farmer's feet so badly with scalding water that his soles came off.
"What kind of society has ours become? Does any grievance now justify any violence?
"And where is the outrage and the concern of the government at this moment of crisis for our communities and our people?" Leon asked.
He accused Mbeki of attacking those who spoke openly about crime.
Instead of railing against racists - real and imagined --Mbeki and the rest of Cabinet should spend less time roaming the world and a little more time tending the fences at home, which had been breached by the army of violent criminals performing acts of gratuitous violence almost at will.
"There is no doubt that global issues such as peace in Israel/Palestine and the reform of the United Nations are important.
"But ask the average South African whether he would prefer the president to concentrate his time on those issues, or to secure his neighbourhood or township from the scourge of criminality, and for his wife and daughter to be free from the fear of rape - and the answer is, as they say, a no-brainer.
"They surround themselves with bodyguards and VIP protection officers.
"President Mbeki himself has more protection officers, and travels with more security vehicles, than any president in our country's history.
Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad even dismissed crime as nothing more than "an ever-handy swart gevaar tactic".
The reality was that crime haunted black communities just as much as, if not more than, other communities.
"It is almost useless to talk about sentencing when less than ten percent of violent crimes result in a conviction.
"More than the death penalty, what South Africa desperately needs is bold leadership in the fight against crime.
- SAPA
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