Equipping police will only address part of SA’s violent crime problem

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The quarterly crime statistics released by police minister Bheki Cele point to a dire situation we find ourselves in as a country concerning violent crime. 

Although there has been a slight decrease in the number of child murders, the fourth quarter statistics released by Cele are consistent with previous quarters and they confirm one thing — we have high levels of violence in society and policing alone is not adequate to address it. 

What South Africa desperately needs is a focused, massive, multi-sectoral and long-term behaviour-change campaign that talks to the crime crisis we are facing. 

According to the numbers released by the police minister, between January and March this year (a period of about 90 days) more than 6 000 were killed, representing a 3.4% increase in murder during the reporting period. These are not people who died in road accidents or natural disasters such as floods or lightning strikes. These are people who died as a result of guns, knives, stones, garden spades and even bare hands.   

But why is violence so pervasive in society? Why are we having so much of it directed at women and children? We need to determine what the police can successfully deal with before we are in a position to make a judgment whether our policing strategies are effective in combating crime. 

There are many factors that merit our attention if we are to fully comprehend the nature and complexity of the violent crime we are confronted with. 

First, we have a history of violence in this country where it was a preferred instrument or route to resolve differences and conflict. We had a state that was actively sponsoring violence by arming certain groupings, especially in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, to carry out attacks in communities to attain certain political goals in its quest to derail the democratic process. 

As a country we have not fully recovered from that violence — the seeds that were planted in the 1980s in particular are proving hard to destroy. This is the reason why we see, for instance, acts of criminality being carried out during student protests when property is attacked and destroyed as we saw at the University of Fort Hare and other campuses across the country when students are unhappy about an examination timetable, academic exclusion or unpaid NSFAS fees. 

It points to a culture that is endemic and that the police alone can do very little about.  

There is also violence of service-delivery nature that is directed at municipal authorities which were responsible for rendering services to the population. These administrations were perceived as an extension of “Pretoria” and everything had to be done to undermine and attack them through acts of violence including arson and other structural damages. 

This kind of violence is apparent every time members of the community are aggrieved about service delivery that they get, or don’t get, from the government. What we see happen during these “service-delivery protests” are violent acts directed at officials including the police, public infrastructure and ordinary members of the public who are not part of the protest. Stones are hurled at passing motorists who have nothing to do with the protest. 

What this points to is a mindset that is entrenched in communities and it sadly doesn’t end there — it finds expression in other areas of social life.

Second, we are sitting with a huge problem of illegal firearms in our society. These guns are used not only in committing other crimes such as robberies and hijackings, they are also used to commit social crimes such as murder. 

This is an area our police, especially crime intelligence, should pay particular attention to. They must establish where illegal guns come from and whether there are syndicates that push these illegal guns, and then find ways to break the back of these syndicates.   

Third, a lot of the violence that is unearthed by these crime statistics place women and children at the centre of our social dysfunctionality. Unlike other crimes, the nature of much gender-based violence (GBV) is that it happens in private, away from the eyes of the public and the police. 

However, there are cases where incidents are reported to police and victims are told to “go home and settle the matter” only for the victims to later die at the hands of their attackers. This is indicative of a lack of understanding within our policing establishment. This is one area of the GBV crisis where the police can make a difference through training and units such as the family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit (FCS) dedicated to fighting crimes against women and children. 

Violence against women and children should be treated as a social health issue and like other public health problems — such as TB, HIV and AIDS or mental health — we can only make a significant change if we invest in behaviour-change campaigns and be prepared to remain with it for long given the nature of these campaigns. 

There are no quick wins in dealing with this multi-layered social crisis and the resources required are huge. So far we do not have behaviour-change campaigns addressing the scourge of GBV. 

It is important that while working on social change campaigns to address attitudes and behaviour, the government has to move with corresponding speed to address the economic policy and skills challenges that account for a lot of what we see around crime. 

We have an unacceptable situation of unemployed and disengaged youth in our country. Many of them get attracted to a life of crime driven by their survival instinct, starting with petty crimes and eventually graduating into more serious and violent crimes like infrastructure theft and armed robberies. 

The situation is dire and demands that we adjust our way of thinking and doing things. It is unacceptable that we kill more people and brutalise women and children way more than countries that are at war.   

Hadebe is founder of anti-crime advocacy and social change movement MACLA.  Sabela is a journalism student at Durban University of Technology.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.