Structural deficiency
THE Ngcobo tragedy is a symptom of South Africa’s structural deficiency. Last week on Thursday we woke up to the tragic news that five police officers and a soldier had been fatally shot in Ncgobo. According to media reports an undisclosed number of young men stormed into the Ngcobo police station in the early hours and committed this heinous crime.
Some people have commented on the rise and danger of religious cults – which these men were apparently associated with.
But the more salient question in most people’s minds is what drove these men to commit this despicable act? Perhaps the first point of departure is to understand the crime trends in South Africa and the enablers of these crimes.
The crime statistics for 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017, released at the end of October 2017 by the South African Police Service (SAPS), shows a total of 19 016 murders for that period, up 343 from the 18 673 murders recorded in 2015/16.
The report concluded that the Eastern Cape had the highest murder rate at 55.9 per 100 000 people in 2016/17.
This indicates that the Ngcobo police shooting may be nothing more than a microcosm of structural deficiency and the erosion of public institutions that the country has experienced over recent years, particularly during the Zuma administration.
The structural deficiency relates to the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Year in and year out, statistics show that women and youth in general, and blacks in particular, are the most disadvantaged people in South Africa. Figures from Statistics SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey released in June 2017 by the then statistician-general Dr Pali Lehohla showed that unemployment among youth aged between 15 and 34 had reached an alltime high of 58% in the second quarter of 2017.
The Labour Force Survey results also showed that of the 6.2-million people officially unemployed‚ 29.8% were female.
Dr Lehohla referred to this as “the feminisation of unemployment”.
These startling figures are the highest amongst the Brics member states as well as our African peers. For example, youth unemployment in Nigeria stood at 33.1% in September 2017.
What do these figures mean in connection with the Ngcobo tragedy? Firstly empirical research evidence on the crime-inequality relationship shows a positive correlation between inequality and crime. Hsieh and Pugh (1993) found a 97% bivariate correlation of coefficients for violent crime with either poverty or inequality.
Equally, Demombynes and Ozler (2005) found SA police stations in areas of high inequality recorded the most violent crimes.
It is clear that unless the state, in partnership with its citizens from all structures, effectively responds to these structural deficiencies – which are mostly stacked against women and the youth – the solution to reducing crime, and violent crime in particular, will only be a pipe dream. — Dr Thabile Sokupa, head of projects, University of the Western Cape