South Africa losing battle against murder and rape

SOUTH AFRICANS are killing relatives and acquaintances at an alarming rate, police said, acknowledging traditional methods for battling crime could do little to stem the tide.

According to annually released crime statistics Wednesday, police have failed to achieve a targeted decrease of 7%-10% in the numbers of murders and rapes over the year.

South Africa, with nearly 50 murders each day, has one of the highest murder and rape rates in the world and an international reputation as a violent society.

Murders decreased by 2% but still totalled 18,528. Rape also declined slightly by 1%, but the number reported was a huge 54,926.

Cash-in-transit robberies, largely the work of sophisticated syndicates, showed the largest increase, up 74.1% from 220 to 383 and car hijackings increased 3.1%.

According to the report, 81.5% of the murder victims knew their attacker and 61.9% were either related to or knew the killer very well. The report said 76% of rape victims knew their attacker.

“These crimes are committed behind closed doors, in secluded spots,” said Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula.

The high crime rate has dominated headlines and sparked soul-searching among South Africans. A day before the statistics were released, Archbishop Desmond Tutu raised concern about an increasing sense of lawlessness.

“What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Rights go hand in hand with responsibility, with dignity, with respect for oneself and the other,” Dr Tutu said in his Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town on Tuesday.

Dr Tutu decried the rape of children, some as young as nine months, and the staggering murder rate, exceeded only by Colombia.

This week one of the country’s top judges sat in court and listened to how his four-year-old granddaughter was gagged, blindfolded and left for dead under a heavy mattress.

The government is desperate to counter the country’s violent image, especially in the run-up to the soccer World Cup in 2010.

Chief police statistician Chris de Kock, said these “social crimes”, which are often exacerbated by alcohol and drug abuse, were difficult to combat with conventional policing methods. He said the only way to combat the rising tide of family violence was to make large-scale, intense improvements in the living conditions of people in a country where much of the population is still desperately poor.