Editorial
South Africa’s crime figures for the last quarter of last year were released yesterday. They make for woeful reading: murder is up by 6.6%, sexual violence increased by 5% – on top of already high statistics.
It’s something that’s all the more galling given that we are living in lockdown under a state of emergency. There is a curfew. Our police are ostensibly enforcing this – as Police Minister Bheki Cele was always quick to remind us throughout 2020.
His officers arrested a phenomenal number of people for breaking lockdown restrictions last year, yet 2 481 people still managed to get themselves murdered in public between October and December. Cele famously told the nation he didn’t even want married couples to kiss in their own bed at night – instead, 1 643 people were killed in their homes.
A staggering 12 218 people were reported raped in the last quarter of last year, yet there is still a shortage of rape kits in police stations – a vital tool in collecting evidence for the possible prosecution of the rapist.
Yesterday Cele, announcing the crime statistics, vowed that the police would have to “dig deep and put their shoulder to the wheel” to turn the situation around. The day before he spent in Nkandla, having tea with a man who stands accused of corruption, state capture and contempt of court. He wasn’t there to arrest him.
Perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps if he stopped posing and offering pithy sound bites, if he stopped going for the low hanging fruit like a possessed classroom monitor and actually set the example, then maybe we would see a decline in crime figures.
Cele’s never had it so good; people’s freedom of movement and association are curtailed like rarely before – and still people are not safe. That’s his legacy.