Christmas in a mass of crime

In case anyone’s wondering why South Africa is losing the battle against crime, here are some telling pointers from my local law-enforcement agency in Worcester. The town, like most others in South Africa, has a massive rate of house-breaks and car thefts.

Every week you hear of a house that’s been burgled in your neighbourhood. I had my first break-in the other day. I stay on a farm, and headed into town to watch the Rugby World Cup final.

On my return I came back to a house whose burglar bars had been bent off. The thieves made off with as much as their hands allowed them to carry, which amounted to R25 000-worth of uninsured audio equipment.

The culprits were identified by tracker dogs as being the labourers who live within eyeshot of me: neighbours, in other words. They vehemently denied everything. The fingerprint results proved otherwise.

While observing the case and the people assigned to it, it’s become deeply apparent that the local detectives are a heavily overburdened unit. There are only six detectives handling all of the house-breaks and car thefts of the entire town (population about 200 000).

On a normal day, each detective is sitting with about 30 open cases to solve. Now, during the holiday period, some in their team are away on leave. Each detective then has 60 cases to deal with.

That’s like having 60 history projects to do simultaneously. The stress shows on their faces. It’s not uncommon for dockets to go missing or even vanish in the complicated and interlinked framework between courts and police office.

When you throw in a Mickey Mouse salary — R4 000, for that’s what these hard-working people earn a month — you have a tailor-made situation for low moral. They don’t even get free air time and have to phone people connected with the case at their own expense. The detectives are constantly having to deal with the lowest strata of society, observe the terrible things that people are prepared to do to one another, and encounter the greedy lies that people are prepared to tell to escape responsibility for their deeds.

It also doesn’t help when their principal, South Africa’s police chief, is under a criminal cloud of dark dimensions. You walk into the charge office, and there he is, looking down at you from the walls — Jackie Selebi, finish en klaar. Some criminals that see the large portrait must be relieved and think: it’s OK, he’s one of us.

In the townships, people who join the police force are seen as traitors, ostracised by the community. This must be a relic from the apartheid era that’s still with us. It’s unfortunate, as this means the type of people who join the police force are not necessarily the best and, indeed, most honest candidates for the job.

No wonder the criminals are thriving. Light sentences are being handed down by the courts. The other day, an apprehended suspect attacked one of the investigators with a screwdriver during his arrest. He was found guilty in the courts. He got a six-month suspended sentence.

So I’m not getting my hopes up for the trial next week. The culprits have refused to cooperate and have protected the man who drove off with my stuff. They are probably expecting a light suspended sentence that will free them up to do some Christmas shopping in the neighbourhood in the coming weeks.

Who can blame them? With Jackie Selebi playing Father Christmas, for criminals it’s the season to be jolly.