High crime impinges on our freedom

Few South Africans would disagree with police minister Bheki Cele, who described our country as one that, statistically, resembles a war zone. On Tuesday police revealed that at least 57 people were killed in the country every day, 6.9% more than in the previous year. Perhaps unsurprising was the confirmation that two of the 30 deadliest places in the country are Bethelsdorp and Kwazakhele in Nelson Mandela Bay. Of course the statistics revealed by the police are under scrutiny, with some believing, legitimately, that numbers are a vastly watered-down version of reality.

However, even at their most conservative, the figures tell a startling tale of a nation under siege and a state that is failing in its most fundamental constitutional mandate to keep us safe.

Indeed it would be amiss to place the responsibility to fight crime only at the door of the police.

Our painful reality demands that each of us take proactive action to protect ourselves, within the law, and to create spaces where thuggery is never permitted.

However, we equally cannot run away from the fact that the constitutional mandate to create a safe nation lies with various arms of the state.

In the last decade, in particular, we have witnessed an unprecedented erosion of law enforcement, at all levels of the state, which sought to normalise criminality.

As such, the weaker our instruments of law and order became, the more emboldened criminals were in their efforts to create anarchy.

On the receiving end, every day, are the most vulnerable of our society – men, women and children who have limited means to protect and defend themselves.

Ours is not a democracy we can fully be proud of when none of us can enjoy our most basic human right – the right to life and freedom of movement for ourselves and our loved ones. Indeed we live in a war zone.

What we do about it now will determine the kind of nation our children and theirs will inherit.