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'Mbeki must join crime fight'
28/08/2006 17:40 - (SA)
Cape Town - Two South African opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance and the Freedom Front Plus, have called on the African National Congress government to take the country's crime problem seriously.
DA crime spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard said on Monday that according to the latest Business Monitor International special report on crime, South Africa was "fast gaining the global reputation as a country that has lost the war against crime".
She said this was of particular concern "given the huge contribution that tourism plays in our national economy, not to mention the need for foreign direct investment".
According to the report, South Africa was known as a nation that specialised in vehicle hijackings, armed robberies and murder.
Considerable risk of being robbed
About 40 per 100 000 South Africans were murdered annually, whereas in the United States the murder rate was just 5.5 per 100 000.
While Kohler-Barnard said the report appeared to buy into the government's argument that tourists were rarely murdered or raped, "it fails to point out that tourists are at considerable risk of being robbed".
She said the recent muggings of delegates to an international sociology conference in Durban confirmed this reality.
"Several of these delegates later wrote damning letters to the press asking how South Africa was going to protect visitors to the World Cup.
"The perception that our country is a cesspit of violent crime is worsening, and today nearly 50% of visitors from other countries are primarily concerned with the fact they may be attacked."
Commandos withdrawn
The special report said that in 2004/'05 there were 18 793 murders - mainly in black communities, but also on farms "in the context of robbery or disputes on white-owned farms".
In the case of attacks on farms, the government had withdrawn virtually all support previously given to these communities in the form of commandos and special patrols, she noted.
She said South Africans had a comparatively low level of police officers - with only 224 per 100 000 back in 2002 - the only figures available - as compared with between 285 and 363 everywhere else in the world.
"Indeed, these low levels of policing are reflected by the statistics recently released by South Africa's short-term insurers.
"They agree with claims made by the Democratic Alliance that we are in the grip of an unprecedented crime wave - stating that vehicle hijackings and burglaries, specifically, soared 20% in the past two months."
Meanwhile FF+ MP Pieter Groenewald said it was time President Mbeki was informed of problems in the police force.
Arguing that the public was shouldering the burden of financing policing - traditionally the job of the State - he said: "With the scrapping of the (military) commandos, farmers are organising protection organisations at their own cost to secure rural areas.
"In towns and cities, the public organise neighbourhood watches at their own cost.
"The state is neglecting its duty of protecting the public against crime," said Groenewald.
He said that affirmative action in the police had forced out experts, while those who remained had their police work hampered by the lack of equipment.
Security guards increased
"The least the government could do is to give tax relief to the public, who had to make use of security services and security organisations."
Groenewald noted that, according to statistics released by the SA Institute for Race Relations' annual South Africa survey, the number of security guards had increased by 15% since 1997.
In the same period, the number of police had decreased by 2.2% in contrast to a 170% increase in the spending on justice.
- I-Net Bridge (News24)
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