“The criminals are running amok in this country.”
This statement by social cohesion activist, Yusuf Abramjee should shock but journalists attending the launch of the free crime response app, Namola, didn’t seem to flinch.
And one can see why, considering that during the 30-odd minute press conference, this newsroom chased two breaking crime news stories in Joburg’s northern suburbs alone: a store robbery in Carlswald, Midrand, in which five perpetrators were cuffed, and a bomb scare in Sandton.
At present, it is the violence associated with crime that is perhaps most alarming. Just on Sunday, we learnt that congregants of a Hillbrow church beat up a Metro police officer who was enforcing a bylaw.
Following the recent release of the SA Police Service crime statistics – which saw murder increase by 1,8 per cent and armed robbery up by 6,4 per cent – the Institute for Security Studies, in a press statement, did not mince its words: “A steady rise in murder and armed robbery shows police are not getting a grip on serious violent crime in South Africa, despite a budget increased by almost 50 per cent since 2011/12 to R87 billion.”
The institute called on the police to urgently ‘improve their capability to investigate crime, gather evidence and arrest the perpetrators’, which, according to the institute, would require police to earn communities’ trust.
The importance of accurate information was another point stressed by the institute after a discrepancy was found in the number of house robberies recorded by the Victims of Crime Survey and the police. The institute said accurate information was ‘critical’ if crime-reducing strategies were to be developed, and encouraged the police to work with Statistics South Africa and civil society groups to ensure the accuracy of the crime data and the tackling of crime in a ‘collaborative way’.
A collective effort in the fight against crime is not a new notion, but it remains a key strategy. As Abramjee put it at the Namola launch – at which he described how Dialdirect Insurance partnered with Namola to ensure the app was available nationally – “We can make South Africa safe if we join hands and strengthen partnerships at every level.”
How are you joining hands to fight crime in your community? Drop me a line at daniellap@caxton.co.za
