Crime, our constant companion, is the elephant in SA’s room

AMID all the guff at Senzo Meyiwa’s funeral service last weekend, somebody forgot to ask the crucial question: why have the politicians, some of them on stage hogging the limelight, utterly failed to deal with crime in this country?

The politicians didn’t pull the trigger that killed Meyiwa and countless others who have been maimed or died unacknowledged and unaccounted for, but they should be in the dock. It is the government’s primary responsibility to ensure the security of its citizens.

But there they were, profiting from the harvest of their neglect and incompetence. How many of them knew or had met Meyiwa? Our politics, sadly, is often not driven by current realities or even future promises, but sentiments of the past. Government performance on crucial issues such as crime or the economy, for instance, hardly moves its constituency one way or the other.

Whoever came up with the brilliant idea of another funeral service at a football stadium must have been dozing through the chaotic Nelson Mandela memorial. Such venues attract a particular crowd. Mourning calls for a sombre mood, which doesn’t always sit well with soccer followers. And they duly arrived in their thousands, armed with their vuvuzelas, and proceeded to blow up a storm.

Meyiwa’s murder is a tragedy not only for his family and fans, but for the country as a whole. Coming as it does with the world’s attention still trained on the Oscar Pistorius and Shrien Dewani murder trials, it cements South Africa’s reputation as a pretty dangerous neighbourhood. Phrases such as “murder capital of the world” are back in vogue. It becomes almost impossible to argue otherwise or to swim against such a tide. Unhappily, crime has become our brand. It’s the first thing that comes to people’s minds when South Africa is mentioned. Spare a thought for those who have the unenviable task of selling South Africa abroad.

And yet crime, a constant companion for most of us, remains something of a taboo subject. We’re reluctant to talk about it, hoping that it will go away. It won’t. It is, if you like, the elephant in the room. Even victims of crime are sometimes made to feel guilty talking about their experiences. Some view it as an unpatriotic act. And their instinctive reaction is either to lash out or defend “our hard-won democracy”.

The line of thinking seems to be that, because the rest of the world is using crime as a stick to beat us, we should close ranks. We have been here before. It is the sort of siege mentality that erstwhile supporters of apartheid will recognise.

Those who dare to broach the subject in any meaningful way can earn the wrath of the authorities. A few years ago, Paul Harris and his team at First National Bank were about to launch a campaign to encourage the government to seriously address the issue when Essop Pahad, Thabo Mbeki’s attack dog, got wind of it.

Pahad bullied the business community to disown Harris. It meekly obliged, and hung him out to dry. One of the critical faultlines in our new society is business or corporate cowardice — saying things in the comfort of the country club or around the braai that you can’t repeat in public or when confronted by a ministerial functionary.

Crime is a stewing pot of all our pathologies. It talks to, among others, inequality, poverty, suspicion of one another born out of years of separation and exclusion, and society’s predilection to violence. It’s like a cancer that has attacked the whole body. One stock remedy therefore cannot suffice.

It follows that the police are fighting a losing battle. And, except for a few areas of excellence, they are, like the rest of our bureaucracy, corrupt, incompetent and indifferent. A police station is no longer a place where one reports a crime — it’s where one gets a case number to claim damages from the insurance company.

Also, what has been their most effective weapon in crime-fighting — beating confessions out of suspects — has been taken away from them. And without it, they are almost hapless. Suspects have rights.

Detection has also been made more difficult by the large number of people in the country who are not captured in the central database. The country’s population, for instance, is a guesstimate.

There are vociferous calls for Bheki Cele’s return. It’s a cry of desperation. The sight of a floundering Riah Phiyega adds to our anxiety. We are looking for a messiah. But this so-called general is the last thing we need. He introduced a pernicious strain in our police service the last time round.

What is needed is an honest conversation on what has become a national crisis. We have to be on the same page on the extent of the problem and how to tackle it collectively. A summit on crime could achieve that.

It’s the least we can do for Meyiwa and the countless others who have perished so needlessly.

More importantly, a safe and secure environment is an absolute necessity for progress and prosperity. Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.timeslive.co.za