Crime-free streets: What South Africa can learn from China

Picture it: Beijing, early afternoon. I take a short stroll from my hotel room to familiarise myself with the goings-on of my “new neighbourhood” in the Chinese capital.

A gogo on a scooter, with a grandchild tightly strapped at her back, passes by the main road to stop at a nearby pharmacy.

She leaves the scooter outside, without fastening it to a pole to secure it from potential criminals – something we are accustomed to in Johannesburg and in other SA cities.

After a good 20 minutes, she heads out, gets onto her scooter and is off home.

Passers-by go about with their business with no one thinking of stealing the bike.

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Minutes later, I alert a driver, whose car is parked opposite the same pharmacy, that the passenger window of his car is open.

My mandarin is not up to scratch, except for saying xie xie (thank you). He assures me not to bother because nothing will happen to it.

How I wish this could be the culture in the crime-plagued streets of Jozi, Hillbrow, Kempton Park and Sandton – where you have to secure anything from a wallet, cellphone to a car.

I realised I was not home but in China, where the culture is far different, with not obeying the law taught as a lesson.

What a culture shock.

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Staying in China for a short working spell – to cover the state visit by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the three-day Forum for China-Africa Cooperation summit – has taught me more about the thinking of people from the world’s second-largest economy.

With people going about with their business – jogging, walking, biking or driving – it is unlikely they will suffer the same fate as you would in our streets. In SA, if you do not watch your back and secure your possessions, you become another crime statistic.

We have become accustomed to being too careful – lest something happens – whether you are in your home, car or in the streets.

A good friend and colleague of mine, Abbey Makoe, who was on the same Chinese trip, has found a social sciences way of explaining the South African scenario: the disordered faults of progress.

This, said Makoe, related to the good government intentions of making a difference from apartheid to democracy – only to be thwarted by corruption, state capture and wrong cadre deployment 30 years later.

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“Under apartheid, people feared being on the wrong side of the law because of how harsh police dealt with lawlessness.”

Having travelled to China for the second time, Makoe was the first to give me a heads-up: “Nobody steals or harms another human being in China.

“The consequences for that are dire – a culture the entire 1.4 billion population has bought into.”

I have realised that there is more to be done to inculcate the Chinese culture into our society.

It has to start at home, school and in society.

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In the bustling streets of Jozi, Prichardt, Eloff and Claim, you could be robbed in broad daylight, with passers-by merely watching.

A culture of “it does not happen to me”, is certainly not how those in my generation were brought up.

Coming home late was taboo for my mother Nancy and father Thamsanqa (bless their souls).

Kissing a girlfriend in public, not doing homework, washing dishes, or cleaning the house was enough to invite trouble – being called to the master bedroom to receive lashes.

Today, the corporal punishment is gone in schools and pupils can do as they wish, with teachers becoming sitting ducks for abuse – sometimes attacks.

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So much for human rights and the constitution, while Rome continues to burn.