Is political instability linked to a higher homicide rate?

Why homicide rates go up and down has befuddled criminologists for generations. Nobody predicted that in the 1960s, when economic growth was soaring and people were getting rich, North Americans would begin killing one another at rates never recorded before.

And criminologists were left dumbfounded when, in the 1990s, the murder rate suddenly fell to historic lows across the developed world.

Homicide keeps showing scholars how little they know. Students of homicide have nonetheless recently stumbled across something that is genuinely new and exciting. In some times and places, murder rates are enormously sensitive to shifts in the political climate.

The sociologist Roger Gould, for instance, found that in 19thcentury France every period of political instability — in 1830-31, 1848-50 and 1870-71 — was accompanied by a spike in homicide, even in parts where there was no political violence and life went on as before.

And during periods when government legitimacy rose, such as when legislation was passed in 1867 enfranchising propertyless householders, the homicide rate halved.

On the face of it, this is puzzling. There is no direct connection between people’s trust in those who govern them and their propensity to kill one another in barroom brawls. Clearly, in some contexts the legitimacy of government establishes an atmosphere, no less powerful for being invisible, that settles the relationships between ordinary people.

“When individuals or groups felt empowered, included and respected,” writes the homicide scholar Randolph Roth, “…they went about their daily lives with confidence. Small slights and disagreements did not bother them as much….

“But when they felt that they could not get a fair shake from the government or felt cut off from their neighbours, small insults or disagreements they might otherwise have brushed off could enrage them and in some cases lead to violence and murder.”

All of this is of enormous relevance to contemporary SA. When freedom came in 1994 the homicide rate almost immediately declined. And it kept dropping for a decade and a half. By 2011, it was less than half of what it had been in 1995. This is a staggering decline, and scholars have scrambled to explain it. Some say that stricter gun control introduced in the early 2000s is largely responsible; others that rapid expansion of the welfare state from the late 1990s took the edge off the harshness of life.

But part of the answer could simply be that people were happier with the way they were governed and that this new satisfaction cooled tempers and brought a measure of calm.

And, surprise, surprise, in the mid 2010s, when disillusionment with the political class began spreading through the general population, the murder rate began rising for the first time in 20 years.

It seems SA is one of those countries whose homicide rate is deeply sensitive to the legitimacy of government. Not all places are like this. The developed world used to be, but it isn’t anymore.

In the 1990s, homicide began dropping fast across North America, western Europe, parts of eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand. This was a global phenomenon and cannot be explained by national dynamics. What these places had in common was that they were wealthy and developed; something in the culture they shared began to change.

But SA is more like 19thcentury France. When national political legitimacy waxes, homicide wanes. So if we want to know how President Cyril Ramaphosa is governing, we should look at the homicide rate five years from now. Will the rise be reversed under his watch? This may tell as much about what his presidency means as election results.