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03 June 2022 | Story Nitha Ramnath and Andre Damons


The criminal justice system in South Africa is not the solution to fixing the country’s crime problem, according to Gareth Newham, Head of the Justice and Violence Prevention Programme at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

Newham was part of the University of the Free State’s (UFS) webinar titled Crime in South Africa – who is to blame? which is the first instalment of the Thought-Leader webinar series.  Adriaan Basson, Editor of News24, Prof Joy Owen, Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Free State (UFS), and Justice Dennis Davis, retired Judge at the High Court of Cape Town, were also part of the panel, which was facilitated by Prof Francis Petersen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS. 
 
Newham also said that the criminal justice system is a reactive system. “Problems can be addressed through proper policing, where the job of the police is to identify where the crime is and who is responsible,” he added. “To reduce the murder rate, we need to look at information available and start developing evidence-based prevention programmes in specific localities,” said Newham. Newham added that there needs to be an overhaul of the SAPS and a rethinking of what we expect from the police. “SAPS needs to build public trust and must be trained in communication, problem solving, and the de-escalation of violence,” added Newham.

Newham pointed out that foreign nationals are not the cause of crime in South Africa.

All South Africans are responsible for crime in the country

According to Prof Owen, all South Africans are responsible for crime in the country. We are responsible for curbing it, eradicating it, and removing it. We are also responsible for supporting it, maintaining it, and incubating it.

“We are part of a larger ecology that is responsive to the other. And to understand the complexity of crime, we need to consider the system, not merely its parts. If we do, this wisdom might prevail as we admit that we are indeed all part of a societal problem, and by implication the solution we are waiting for.” 

“Whose responsibility is it then to ‘combat’ crime? Yours and mine. How? We need to build the social compact. We need to recognise the value and strength that exist in our co-relating. Recognise our responsibility to each other. Understand the dynamics of power, and how a collective response from the bottom up can manifest a different reality – Operation Dudula is a case in point, yes. But so too are other community-driven organisations such as Equal Education, and most noticeably, Gift of the Givers,” said Prof Owen. 

She also asked the question – given the recent statistics with the unemployment rate in South Africa being 35,3% and the youth unemployment rate 66,5%, have you wondered why the crime rate is not higher? South Africa has one police officer for every 413 civilians. 

“The majority of those living in South Africa are not committing crimes, even if we recognise that crimes are underreported in South Africa; even if we understand that we will never have enough police officers to prevent crime. Think about it. Do we understand that most of those who are resident in South Africa are law-abiding citizens? Do we understand that daily, men and women make a conscious choice not to rob another?”

Any solution to crime in South Africa, according to Prof Owen, will have to be multifaceted, multipronged, and holistic. Poverty needs to be eradicated; we need to ensure food security and active engagement in livelihoods that secure our collective well-being. 

SAPS have not functioned properly for many years

Basson, who talked from the perspective of a journalist with 20 years’ experience, said we cannot look at crime in the country without looking at our history, as the country has a violent history. Crime is not something new that started in 1994. The history of colonialism and apartheid marked by crime against certain people because of their race, contributed and is still contributing to many of the issues that underline and caused the crime we have in our country today.
According to Basson, unemployment, poverty, and inequality also contribute to crime. He said the police have not functioned properly for many years. It has not acted as a protection service for South Africans – especially those who cannot afford private security. This can be attributed to corruption in the leadership of the police. 
 
“We have a big problem with our police, and unfortunately, I do not see a way out. I also do not think our current administration has a clear strategy to fix the police. The current Minister of Police has been fired as police commissioner due to a dodgy building contract (which was overturned in court many years later), and now it feels like he is still not done, as he acts more like the police commissioner than the political head,” said Basson.

Judge Davis added that while the police produce good evidence from time to time, shoddy work often prevents convictions, which is exacerbated by the absence of forensic skills. “A complete degradation of the system exists and there is the need for an overhaul of the SAPS,” added Judge Davis. He stressed that the huge levels of corruption within the SAPS compounds the problem even further and questioned whether we are attracting the right people into SAPS. 

Resurrection of the NPA needed

Judge Davis did not mince his words when he said that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) was guttered under Shaun Abrahams. He added that successful prosecutions were needed, and support from the private bar was important for the NPA to be resurrected. “There are many talented and dedicated prosecutors in the NPA,” he added.

According to Judge Davis, the court system is under tremendous strain, and however skilled or talented the magistrates and judges are, the Stalingrad tactics of holding up cases forever is problematic. He added that hearings should be longer. “Court times are a significant problem, and we do not sit for enough hours and push cases as significantly as we can,” he emphasised.

Judge Davis also touched on the complex parole system and emphasised the need for proper parole officers. He added that a completely inadequate system exists from beginning to end, and that there is a need to use the skills that South Africa has. “Sentencing is also a problem, and no proper sentencing training exists for judges,” he added.

“If we had national security, the July 2021 unrest would not have happened, and we would have had convictions,” he said.
“We also cannot underestimate the effects of apartheid and the social and political consequences of people living on the margins in relation to crime,” Judge Davis added. 

News Archive

Prof Antjie Krog speaks on verbalising revulsion and the collusion of men
2015-06-26

From the left are Prof Lucius Botes, UFS: Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities; Prof Helene Strauss, UFS: Department of English; Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, UFS: Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation Studies; Prof Antjie Krog, UCT: Department Afrikaans and Dutch; Dr Buhle Zuma, UCT: Department of Psychology. Both Prof Strauss and Dr Zuma are partners in the Mellon Foundation research project.

“This is one of the bitterest moments I have ever endured. I would rather see my daughter carried away as a corpse than see her raped like this.”

This is one of 32 testimonies that were locked away quietly in 1902. These documents, part of the NC Havenga collection, contain the testimonies of Afrikaner women describing their experiences of sexual assault and rape at the hands of British soldiers during the South African War.

This cluster of affidavits formed the foundation of a public lecture that Prof Antjie Krog delivered at the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Bloemfontein Campus on Tuesday 23 June 2015. The lecture, entitled ‘They Couldn’t Achieve their Goal with Me: Narrating Rape during the South African War’, was the third instalment in the Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past. The series is hosted by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor in Trauma, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation Studies at the UFS, as part of a five-year research project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Verbalising revulsion

The testimonies were taken down during the last two months of the war, and “some of the women still had marks and bruises on their bodies as evidence,” Prof Krog said. The victims’ words, on the other hand, struggled to express the story their bodies told.

What are the nouns for that which one sees? What words are permissible in front of men? How does one process revulsion verbally? These are the barriers the victims – raised with Victorian reserve – faced while trying to express their trauma, Prof Krog explained.

The collusion of men

When the war ended, there was a massive drive to reconcile the Boers and the British. “Within this process of letting bygones be bygones,” Prof Krog said, “affidavits of severe violations by white men had no place. Through the collusion of men, prioritising reconciliation between two white male hierarchies, these affidavits were shelved, and, finally, had to suffer an embargo.”

“It is only when South Africa accepted a constitution based on equality and safety from violence,” Prof Krog said, “that the various levels of deeply-rooted brutality, violence, and devastation of men against the vulnerable in society seemed to burst like an evil boil into the open, leaving South African aghast in its toxic suppurations. As if, for many decades, we did not know it was there and multiplied.”

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