HEADLINES:
R/€ Crime Wave
May 29, 2007 Edition 1
THE recent spate of murders, serious robberies and hijackings in KwaZulu-Natal is having a traumatic impact on communities. It urgently needs to be halted before more victims and their friends decide to take the law into their own hands in revenge attacks.
This past weekend saw two such vigilante attacks occur in the Midlands alone. In one, a group of neighbours responded to a housebreaking by chasing, catching and severely beating an alleged housebreaker. The man subsequently died.
In the second instance a man who had allegedly robbed a butchery received head injuries after also having been chased and beaten by members of another community.
These and other incidents are indicative of public exasperation at the inability of the state and the police to adequately protect its citizens - or even to subsequently identify and arrest those responsible for what is becoming a reign of terror.
So brazen are these criminal gangs becoming that they are prepared to attack innocent patrons in public places like restaurants, as happened at the popular St Tropez pavement restaurant on Durban's Berea on Saturday night, with tragic results.
As a consequence, some patrons are becoming reluctant to visit restaurants. Several businesses in the province have reportedly already closed down owing to repeated robberies.
Such is the climate of thought that more people are willing to forego hard-won civil liberties if this will lead to a safer life. This is a very dangerous trend in what was once a police state. We cannot allow vigilante attacks or kangaroo courts to replace the rule of law, but we need the state to come up with stronger policing measures.
The causes of crime are complex, but the solutions - many of them spelled out at the Crime Prevention Summit in Durban last week - are now beyond the point of being urgent.
It is critically important that all sectors should pull together in forging partnerships between the government, policing structures and communities.
The integrated approach that is promised should include, among many other things, a drastic reform at an overwhelmed Home Affairs Department - which appears to be a fertile source for false identity numbers - and a more effective social welfare programme to remove street children and vagrants.
However, the most critical factors are simply to upgrade the police's basic skill levels and to improve the effectiveness of police stations to ensure that law enforcement properly occurs in their areas of responsibility.
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