South Africa Correspondent
Nation Media Group
What you need to know:
- From rampant violent gangsterism, to rival minibus taxi (matatu) gangs, to competing political elements, often within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) itself, to the brutality that often accompanies 'common crime' such as housebreaking, the results of South Africa's long history of inequality and oppression are manifested daily, driven by a downward spiralling economy.
Last Sunday, seven heavily armed men burst into a house in Pietermaritzburg, the capital of South Africa's most populous province, KwaZulu-Natal. Failing to find the homeowner, the attackers forced the 15 occupants of the house to undress, doused them in flammable liquid and set them alight.
Eight died on the spot, two more in the following days, and the survivors were treated for extensive burns.
While shocking, the incident is just one of many similarly shocking but diverse forms of violence that seem to have South Africa in their grip, even after 29 years of democratic rule under a human rights-oriented constitution.
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Routinely reporting murder rates on a par with some countries at war, South Africa has a wide range of sociopathic manifestations, born of its 300-year colonial history, followed by 48 years of intense repression under apartheid, but deepened as crisis after crisis has swept the liberated 'rainbow nation' since its birth in 1994.
Years of mounting civic protests over failed service delivery, running at 12 to 13 a day, were only temporarily quelled by Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, but have since returned.
The Covid closures deepened and entrenched South Africa's already evident economic woes, largely caused by poor governance, corruption and a loss of investor confidence during the nine-year tenure of former president Jacob Zuma.
The "Zuma riots" of July 2021, which caused billions of dollars of damage and at least 354 deaths following the former president's imprisonment, were driven as much by the desperate conditions on the ground for many S Africans as by Zuma's imprisonment, according to various post-event analyses.
The 'unrest', in which a political faction allied to Zuma attacked infrastructure targets while mobs looted shopping centres, warehouses and logistics hubs, took place mainly in the Zulu homeland province, home to some 12.4 million of South Africa's 61.5 million people.
There, the national unemployment rate of 32.9 per cent (Q1 2023), one of the highest in the world, is dwarfed by rampant youth unemployment, with 3.7 million (36 per cent of the national total) aged 15-24 neither employed nor in education or training.
From rampant violent gangsterism, to rival minibus taxi (matatu) gangs, to competing political elements, often within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) itself, to the brutality that often accompanies 'common crime' such as housebreaking, the results of South Africa's long history of inequality and oppression are manifested daily, driven by a downward spiralling economy – still Africa's most developed, though rapidly being overtaken by the likes of Kenya and Rwanda – in which the young in particular see little to no hope.
In such circumstances, where the 'new oppression' is grinding poverty, say criminologists and sociologists, a resort to crime is not surprising – and pent-up anger tends to explode in violence.
Which, those who analyse these phenomena go on to explain, is expressed in almost every aspect of life, and why South Africa also has one of the world's highest incidences of gender-based violence (GBV), which continues to escalate despite relentless 'anti-GBV' campaigns and specific laws aimed at ending what used to be called 'domestic disturbances'.
The issue has been highlighted by the government and the media as a social ill to be eradicated.
But South Africans are routinely exposed to a range of gruesome details of bizarre murders and mutilations, serial killings, of which this country seems to produce an unparalleled number, and even high-profile murder cases, such as the current trial of five people accused of involvement in the 2014 shooting of Senzo Meyiwa, then captain of the South African national soccer team, who was killed during a 'home invasion'.
The matter is being played out in living rooms and boardrooms across the country in a real-life TV courtroom drama, not unlike the trial of Paralympian Oscar 'Blade Runner' Pistorius for the shooting death of his model girlfriend.
The underlying causes of all this interpersonal mayhem have only intensified over the past decade and a half, pushing the country's overall murder rate back towards the highs of the mid-1990s, with political killings, which were then common, also making a comeback, especially in KwaZulu-Natal.
In response, South Africa's busy police minister, Bheki Cele, has taken to appearing in person at major violent events and has said he will add 12,000 new recruits to the 176,000-strong police force, all for specialist units such as anti-gang or anti-GBV.
In September last year, Minister Cele said South Africa had 20,000 fewer police officers than in 2010.
The ratio of police to population had fallen from one officer for every 250 people to just one for every 450 people.
With too few police, crime, especially when it involves violence, remains a daily problem for everyone and has set this country up for continued social and political instability that shows no sign of abating and, with power cuts aiding the criminals, is only likely to increase.
The final element pointing to more widespread unrest, death and destruction to come is the easy access to thousands of illegal guns, in some cases for sale even by corrupt police.
More non-corrupt police will help, but the only meaningful solution, economists and political analysts agree, is real relief for beleaguered citizens, born of an economic turnaround of the kind that President Cyril Ramaphosa promised when he took power in 2018, but which has yet to materialise.
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