Bheki Cele’s tall tales: Crime reality contradicts minister’s narratives

In Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Rumpelstiltskin’s ability to spin gold from straw was his wicked means to claiming the first-born child of the miller’s daughter.

Some politicians have a variation of the evil elf’s talent – they can spin crud into dazzling narratives for the naive and with ultimately the same devastating price.

The biggest spinner of tall tales in the Cabinet is Bheki Cele.

In his two-year spell as national police commissioner and almost six years as police minister, Cele has repeatedly hailed minor and temporary statistical blips as incontrovertible evidence that his approach to policing is paying dividends.

Presenting crime figures last week, Cele says while levels of crime are unacceptable there have been “several breakthroughs”.

He cites the 0.8% decline in the 2023-24 second-quarter murder rate over the same period last year. That equates to 59 fewer murders but is meaningless.

As the Institute for Strategic Studies points out, “the number of murders increased by 77% between April 2011 and March 2023, from 15 554 to 27 494. Armed robbery increased by 45%.”

Those were the most dismal figures in SA’s history, so far. It works out at 46 murders per 100 000 people, with only Jamaica recording worse figures, and is a marked deterioration from the 36/100k when Cele took office in 2018.

Not only crime is soaring but it is morphing into new, frightening and increasingly brazen forms. There has been the mushrooming since 2014 of extortionist “black business” and “community forums”.

These gangsters use the excuses of “empowerment” and “transformation” to demand 30% of any new construction project, with the subtle presence of AK47s to speed negotiations.

There is the hijacking and roadside looting of freight carriers. Some attacks are carried out by crime syndicates, some of it is xenophobic political violence against foreign drivers.

Some are just passing motorists and the inhabitants of townships adjacent to the highway taking advantage of a broken-down vehicle.

And then there is the growing phenomenon of kidnap for ransom, a crime unheard of in SA a decade ago.

The victims are not only the wealthy businessmen and lone Western travellers most targeted by South American gangsters and Isis warriors in sub-Saharan Africa.

Here it is happening to school children, tourists and middle-class mums and dads on their way to work.

The statistics of crime, of course, comprise no more than a skeleton. Draped over the numbers are the flesh and blood of real people.

There is a steady erosion of personal safety. Contrary to the assertions of ANC apologists that the fear of crime is a minority group, middle-class phenomenon, the surveys show a far different picture.

Most recently, the State of Security Report, produced quarterly by the Automobile Association, found that less than a third (31%) of South Africans of all races feel “mostly” or “completely” safe.

A larger number (37%) felt “barely safe” or “not safe at all”, including in their own homes. Almost eight out of 10 (76%) had been a victim of a crime.

It all makes for a grim life for ordinary South Africans. But now – despite the annual R3.3 billion spent on 6 000 police officers to protect ministers and other political VIPs – even the governing elite is being affected.

A fortnight ago, Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga, travelling with bodyguards in two luxury vehicles, fell afoul of another growing crime phenomenon: necklaces of spikes thrown across the highway to snag passing vehicles.

When two bodyguards got out to change the tire, they and the minister were held at gunpoint. The robbers made off with R37 000 in cash, cellphones and the service pistols of her bodyguards.

Judging by the schadenfreude subsequently displayed on social media, the minister’s encounter with crime was exactly what many would hope for as a fairy-tale ending.