Nip teen crime in the bud

It stuns logic that despite the many lessons learned by criminal experts and the police from studies and researches done about crime, its trends and impact on South Africa’s society in general and the painful lessons revealed through these studies – it seems like nothing, or rather very little, has been done to formulate an effective counter-strategy to eradicate the scourge of this anti-social ill in our beloved land.

As someone who was born and raised in one of Johannesburg’s first, black residential slums long before the word ‘squatter camp’ and ‘informal-settlement’ became trendy marketing fashion statements in boardroom meetings, I must confess that, like many other concerned law-abiding South Africans on the lower rung of the social ladder, I too have had to constantly live under the hovering threat of the “shadow of death” posed by the rampant rising crime for as long as I can remember.

And like most survivors in our crime-infested townships, I have managed to develop my own instinctive skills which have helped me tread lightly through the country’s dangerous crime minefields as I reluctantly breath the same air and share my space with the very people who perpetrate crime.

But, of course, many of these criminals are often people we know. Some of them are our relatives, neighbours, friends, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, sons, daughters, cousins, and sometimes, even our own employees as well as employers and even our politicians.

But still, we complain everyday about how crime and criminals are making our lives difficult.

Listening to Police Minister Nathi Ntleko and National Police Commissioner Riaah Phiyega present the country’s current crime statistics to the nation in Parliament recently, I did not have to try and think like the crime expert I’m not, to see through the gaping holes in their presentations.

Without doubt, I may not be a criminologist or a crime analyst, but the kind of life I have lived with many other township-dwellers in the crime-ridden townships with their dark, unlit, un-tarred, pot-holed streets over the years, dodging knives, guns, pangas, spears, iron-bars, axes and other crude and dangerous paraphernalia, has remained an undesirable element of life for many South Africans since the first crime victim was mugged on Jozi’s mine dumps during the gold-rush in the Witwatersrand in the early 1800s.

I was left with no doubt in my layman’s mind that law enforcement officials, as well as legal and criminal experts, seem to share the same naïve generalisation of the manifestations of crime and its impact on communities. I was also left with the impression that despite its anti-social stigma and its disruptive element to society, the word “war on crime” with all its connotations, has become nothing more than a word used to measure annual statics rather than to find solutions to crime.

It is my feeling that waving and weaving through eloquent words about how many people died from what crime between this and that period, or how many children were molested by whom between which period and what year, cannot be an effective tool and means of fighting crime and defeating criminals in our communities.

I also do not believe that the police always has to use force in their fight against crime in our communities. We all know what happens to a child or children who are exposed to continued corporal punishment. And sadly, policemen and women have been fighting criminals for ages, but we still have them living in our midst and even in our homes and neighbourhoods.

But I do believe however, that careful planning coupled with effective enforcement of laws and regulations as well as the removal of corrupt officers from the force can and should bring about a measurable change in our police force.

Perhaps, it is also important for our law-makers and law enforcement agencies to realise that policing communities and implementing laws is also not the only means of fighting crime and maintaining law and order. The introductions of other nurturing aspects to society such as spiritual and religious aspects of human developments, also have an important role to play in shaping the morals and behaviour of the nation.

On the other hand, South Africa needs policemen and women who are above reproach and beyond the limitations of the petty criminal in police uniform. It is only by grooming and nurturing our youth in this direction, as Brig Manganyi of the Katlehong SAPS is currently doing with learners from a local high school, that our battle against crime shall begin in earnest..

Brig Manganyi’s programme has enabled him to establish a pilot partnership project with high schools learners who are interested in taking up law or police work as a career. I believe that it is through such programmes that South Africa can groom lawyers, law-makers and policemen who will be able to perhaps see a change in the way the police deal with crime and criminals in our midst.

And there’s no better place than a school to help future leaders to embark on a journey of better policing and law enforcement when dealing with crime and criminals in South Africa in the future.