Opinion - I have become yet another statistic in the unabating rise in crime. As twilight set at the end of a beautiful balmy Durban day, I was making the evening meal when five balaclava-clad burley men armed with an AK-47 and other guns entered my kitchen.
At first, there was a total shock at what seemed like a surreal clip from a scary movie.
Then the mind jolted into a reality check.
This is a home invasion. It was now our turn to come face to face with a daily occurrence in our once beloved country.
Images of other people’s experiences raced through my mind, of beatings, dragging, and endless and unspeakable violence.
Like a lamb before its slaughter, I became catatonically calm. After all, what can the defenceless do but use their wits? Guns are the cursed instruments of cowards through which we empower the weak and disable the strong.
We are herded into our study. Rough demands are made for jewellery, money and the safe. Instead, I show them walls lined with books.
“We have no money and jewellery - see, we only read books,” I plead lamely, still armed with a baguette in my hand from my dinner preparations.
De-stressing
“Calm down,” I say in my trained mesmeric voice of a psychologist used to de-stressing others. “We can’t harm you. We are old.”
They gather their loot from every corner of the house and leave after what seems like an eternity.
The aftermath, however, is what one is not quite prepared for.
At first one is so grateful to be alive, and then the value and sentimentality of the stolen items induce a sense of material loss. Now another person who may be totally unaware of its sentimental value and origins will wear it. I am told that there are many corrupt jewellers waiting to receive such loot. There is camaraderie among criminals.
Then there are feelings of insecurity about the loss of personal privacy and the invasion of one’s sanctity in the home. Daily, South Africans, young and old, are being served a national diet of crime, and the collective anxiety of one’s future in this beautiful land of ours is seriously being questioned.
Why has this happened after a peaceful change of power and the painstaking construction of a fair and just Constitution for all?
The government has yet to declare war on crime. How much longer should we wait before we call a moratorium on crime?
Our prisons are overflowing. Lesser criminals become hardened, hardened become irredeemable.
Recidivism is high. We spend more money on security than food, and criminals are emerging like the proverbial Hydra monster; the more you lop off its head the more heads emerge.
How should South Africans respond to ubiquitous crime?
Other than employing private security companies, retreating to gated communities, building walls and electrified fences and filling up our jails with inmates, what should we do?
Perhaps the best way of tackling the problem is to ask why post-apartheid South Africa has sprouted so much violent crime.
Crime is not about criminals alone. Crime is about a society that breeds criminals. Thus far we have tended to look at the criminal in isolation from the source.
By focusing on the demographics of the criminal element and negating the socio-economic and political circumstances that have given rise to crime, are we not missing the whole point?
If we attempt to seek reasons for our violent behaviour in the apartheid past, we will remain victims.
There is inequity and poverty everywhere in the world, but not all people choose to deal with their status through crime and violence.
Blind eye
How is it possible for gold merchants in the Middle East to simply toss a cloth over their wares and go to pray without anyone daring to touch the stuff?
In another scenario of global poverty, we see Bangladeshis rummaging through sewers to sift out a minute piece of gold shaving to feed their families.
Why haven’t they learnt to rob the merchants of their wares as we do here on a daily basis?
South Africa turns a blind eye to crime at her own peril. There can be no lasting peace or true development in violent societies.
Crime cannot be solved by policemen alone, neither can the death sentence eradicate the problem.
In the South African context there are many elements to the rising crime rate: poverty, joblessness, rising cost of living, social anomie arising out of high expectations and limited opportunities, a collective low self-esteem of victim communities, broken families or no families, poor financial management, lack of creative resources, limited family and community links and educational deficits.
There has to be a willingness on the part of wealthy South Africans to embrace voluntary simplicity and live with less, and instead invest in strategies for making sure that everyone’s needs get met, including the need for economic and personal security for all.
Until we solve poverty, we will not solve crime.
To stop robbery, we need to remove the need to rob.
Without education or opportunity, the poor with a history of high expectations will turn to other means to survive.