BAC when we were bulletproof

“It’s only a perception that crime is out of hand,” I was told when I agreed to accept a directorship as communication director on Business against Crime — Gauteng in 1998. “Your job is to change that perception.”

I had been headhunted from the Chamber of Mines by this august Section 21 company. BAC had come into being when the captains of commerce and the admirals of the fleet of finance had been asked by none other than Nelson Mandela himself to add the “private sector” component to the state’s mighty arm to bring crime in South Africa under control.

He had asked them that in 1996 when South Africans were virtually bulletproof. Two years earlier, we had queued in party mood to choose our new rulers. We had flipped the bird at the global doomsayers who had waited expectantly for the bloodbath like those who go to motor races hoping for the mother of all wipe-outs to happen right in front of them — preferably with dead drivers. And then we had won the William Webb Ellis trophy and were world rugby champions and Madiba wore Francois Pienaar’s number-six jersey.

My God, it was good to be a South African then!

Except for this annoying little bugger, “crime”.

And the “perception” that it could get a tad out of hand.

So we put a damn fine beer brewer into a newly built hot seat. To help with proper management, y’see, while good old George Fivaz took care of the policing. It was like Peter Drucker teaming up with Wyatt Earp, Richard Branson and Sherlock Holmes, Cecil Rhodes and Robert Peel, Henry Ford and Eliot Ness.

We had the cream of the country’s advertisers making power ads and the cream of the media running them for free. The keenest corporate crania sat around gigantic tables concocting our version of Operation Overlord. This was D-Day all over again and the who’s who of the corporatocracy were going to give the fuehrers of felony a jolly good punch in the nose. The boardroom battalions massed their forces and there were lots of bosberaads where the Johnny Walker wisdom filled the air.

Everyone from Absa to Woolworths and Anglo to XStrata wanted a piece of this frenzied IPO. And we didn’t just have God on our side, but Nellie Mandellie to boot.

My God, we were naive back then!

Eleven years later and we haven’t had the least impact — unless, like Chalky-Charlie Nqakula and his invertebrate comrades, you consider 200 000 dead people, three million injured, a traumatised shit-scared nation, a woman or child raped every 30 seconds and a phenomenally underfunded handful of police having an impact. Now even our vaunted CCTV cameras are holding their hands up.

It didn’t take long for the XXXL egos to start smashing into each other like trapped tigers in a teabox. Their PowerPoint presentations trickled down the cobblestones of corporate hierarchy to some newbie with nothing to do.

So they lost interest for a while and so did everyone else. Except the naughty people.

Then they shot some bigwig’s cousin and it was game-on again. That’s when I and others came on board — hell, we even had the wife of the current provincial minister of safety and liaison (what a stupid name for a crime-fighting outfit) on our board. To quote an equally qualified crimefighter, Bob Seeger: “This time we’d get it right.”

So we had boards with boffins and bureaucrats on equal terms. We even had Sam “The Train” Shilowa’s predecessor, Mothole Motshega, on our board (one night after Black Labels too numerous to number he took a shine to me for some obscure reason and kept calling me “My friend, comrade Lulin” — I suppose it sounded a little like Lenin to him at that stage).

We installed cameras in Cape Town and Joeys, had trauma counsellors by the blockload, and I wrote press releases by the hundreds to change this damned perception thing. Hell, I even secured a double-page spread in Time magazine and there ain’t too many pee-ah-ous can lay claim to that!

The boys were BAC in town. We made and scrapped and remade plans faster than you can say “Freeze!” We had more meetings than harvester ants on a narrow pathway. We got funds and big bucks — joining this party cost you a million bucks a year, fully tax-deductible. We helped set up community police forums and …

And then the cracks began appearing, and the ego shit started in again and the fizz went out and overweight heavyweights started throwing their weight around. I left. So did others.

Interest waned and the million-a-year salaries became tougher to justify so some good old boys became government consultants.

And if you look today, there are still some vestiges of Business against Crime here and there, though what they actually do I have no idea. I don’t suppose you have much idea either. I just know they can’t communicate for crap — though Google or Yahoo! will eke out a few speeches and statements if you ask nicely.

Business against Crime, it seems, is still there. But so is this damned perception thing. I don’t think I made much difference to your lives and I was thumped by this damned perception thing.

But it seems it’s still as strong today as it was when Madiba asked for help. And if you read Charlene Smith’s blog or Jonny Steinberg’s column or Anthony Altbeker’s book or any page of any newspaper or visit any website at any time of any day or chat to anyone at any shebeen or any braai, they’ll tell you the same thing: crime is not just a fucking perception, baby. It’s real as a bullet in the brain and just as out of control.