Violence, retribution and the South African justice system

A victim of necklacing in South Africa

However one looks at it, the country has lost its way: the South African police are not in a position to handle crime effectively. 

At a media conference on 14 May 2021, minister of police Bheke Cele admitted to a plethora of failures, including nearly five thousand murders from January to the end of March this year, up 8,4 percent from the same period last year. (These are just the cases reported!) One is not even safe in one’s house: more than 1320 people were murdered in their own homes during that period. In one Johannesburg suburb, there were 68 house breaks in three months, while an average of 105,5 people were raped every day in the same period. More than 75 000 assaults occurred in the relevant quarter, while heavy vehicle hijacking jumped by 25 percent from the previous quarter to 354 during the current period.

What is of great concern to the commercial farming industry is stock theft, with 689 reported cases during the past three months in the province of Mpumalanga alone. More worrisome is the arbitrary use of hunting dogs on private farms (without the consent of the farmer in most instances). Dog packs under the control of syndicates bet huge amounts of money on how many animals (both wild and sometimes domestic) can be killed by the dogs. Some farmers’ properties are arbitrarily invaded by the syndicates and farmers who complain are told to keep away otherwise their farms will be destroyed and their grazing burnt. Eleven people were murdered in the past three months on farms: four were farm owners.

More than 2170 police vehicles in Gauteng province are out of order, 763 more than in November last year. This makes a third of Gauteng’s police vehicles immobile, unrepaired. More than 208 000 DNA tests are awaiting processing, with specific reference to murder and rape cases. Minister Cele says the current situation gives him “sleepless nights” but these are crocodile worries. There are critical vacancies in the police forensic laboratories but ads for these jobs specify that affirmative action applicants need only apply. This rules out whites as candidates for these important jobs. Detectives complain they cannot work properly – their departments are so starved of support and finance that they have to pay for their own uniforms, for finger printing powder and even for flashlights. They pay if they get a flat tire, and they pay to fill up at the local petrol station. There is zero leadership in the SA police force, it is reported. (Rapport 21 March 2021)

Break-ins and theft from police stations have increased: there were more than 136 break-ins in 29 police stations over the past five years. Many of them were to steal crime dockets, weapons and supposedly under-lock-and-key drugs.
Violence

This parlous law and order situation means whole pockets of South Africa are without regular and visible policing. South Africa is a violent society. Many scores are settled “out of court” so to speak. Violence is and has always been the ANC’s calling card. In his book “Secret Revolution- Memoirs of a Spy Boss” (2015), Neil Barnard describes negotiations between former president PW Botha and Nelson Mandela where Botha refused to release Mandela unless the latter eschewed violence. Mandela continually refused, declaring that violence “was all that my people know”. With history as witness, the ANC came to power on a tsunami of violence. It was their modus operandi to get what they wanted. It was a winning tool in their struggle to...

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