Where the truth lies: South Africa's crime statistics

This week a guard starts patrolling the beautiful, tree-lined street in which I live. Since January there have been 13 criminal incidents, including five armed robberies and five house-breakings, in our block of 20 houses. A woman was badly beaten in one incident and needed 13 stitches in her head.

There has not been a single arrest in any incident this year or last. The only arrest any of us knows of in our community was the arrest of the person who raped and stabbed me eight years ago and that was because a private-investigator friend drove the investigation. The area we live in falls under the policing precinct of Parkview, reputedly the best in Johannesburg.

As neighbours we thought ours was a quiet, relatively crime-free street, until we began comparing notes. The police and criminals rely on us not doing this. If we don’t compare notes, we have little awareness of how seriously South Africa’s police underperform. If you don’t believe me, take a notebook and knock on the doors of your neighbours now, or do something radical: invite them for tea. If you stay in a neighbourhood you think is safe, with plenty of electric wiring, beams, high walls, spikes and razor wire of the sort my street boasts, then you more than any other need to understand your false sense of security.

Take these statistics from one of the at least eight security companies operating in our suburb, and bear in mind this is a suburb where people believe themselves sufficiently safe to jog, walk dogs and wheel babies in prams. Assessing six streets, one of which is a main street and two of which are reasonably long, over four months from July to November, one security company logged the theft of 56 computers, 27 laptops, five printers, 15 cellphones, three hi-fis, two televisions and three PlayStations in 38 incidents. All this information is fed to the police in weekly meetings.

These are not crimes of the hungry; groceries were taken in only one instance. These are syndicates who know that many people now work from home or have computers at home. Jewellery and clothes were also only taken once.

In one instance where seven computers, five laptops, printers, a fridge and a television were stolen, the property was protected by beams, CCTV, a palisade fence, razor wire and brick walls. The call was phoned in, which means all security systems were either deactivated or failed or the people were held up. Burglars and armed robbers are most often coming in not when we’re asleep, but when we’re awake and alarms are deactivated. In an instance in our street, the armed robber had a list and went with the female householder from room to room calling out what he wanted and ticking off computers, PlayStations, jewellery …

In another instance where two laptops, a watch and R500 was taken, the householders were “protected” by beams, CCTV, electric fencing, brick walls and burglar bars.

Police claimed in Pretoria last week that there were 6 711 house robberies in the six months from April to September, up from 6 271 over the same period last year. They said most were in the Free State, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga, with the least in the Northern Cape and Gauteng. Pardon me if I don’t believe those statistics.

Criminals depend on us not sharing notes because it makes life easy for them. While we have impressive security in front of our houses, they come over the back walls, or leap across neighbouring walls that lack lights, wire or spikes. As one of my neighbours said: “We’re only as safe as the precautions our neighbour takes.”

We also don’t know crime trends in our street or those that flank us, so we don’t take appropriate precautions. In the streets that flank us at present, we have a group stealing from motor vehicles in driveways. In a fairly busy, but by no means significant, street a block away there have been so many armed robberies lately that house-for-sale signs are mushrooming.

Police keep telling us they rely on us to give them information. A neighbour and I took the incident list we compiled to the head of detectives. She is an individual we like and trust; she is open and energetic. In three sets of incidents we believed we knew who the perpetrators or accessories were or at least where they came from. She gave the list to the sector head — four sectors fall under our station. A week later, when a neighbour went to the woman captain in charge of our sector to establish progress, the captain put her head on the desk and groaned saying she was feeling ill. When the concerned neighbour went to other offices to get help for her, her colleagues laughed and said she always does that.

The police have been to none of the three houses from which we strongly suspect criminal activity came. Three weeks later, nothing has happened from the side of the police; although we in our street now have an e-list and SMS alert, we’re liaising with other streets too.

I called the head of detectives this morning; she said she’d get back to me later today (four days later she has still not called). We also emailed the incident list to the personal email address of Gauteng safety and security MEC Firoz Cachalia; he belongs to the same African National Congress branch as one of the residents. Three weeks later we haven’t heard back from him either. He stays in the area. Police at Parkview claim he has never visited his home precinct.

So here we have a motivated head of detectives with sluggish staff below her and above her a political appointee, the MEC, who is heard but never seen.

It’s little surprise then that police claim residential robberies are up 7%. Indeed, if the experience of our single street and those are us are anything to go by, those statistics are an underestimate.

Why do I say that? Well, take your own example. Have you laid charges every time your car has been broken into, your cellphone stolen or an attempt has been made to break into your home? If you laid charges, was it to satisfy insurance criteria or because you believed an arrest would be made? A neighbour who had laundry stolen off her line never reported it. Nor did two who had attempted break-ins.

Recently when intruders tried to break into my home at 5pm and were chased away by neighbours, I phoned the flying squad. I’d been raped and stabbed in that house, so I was anxious about returning home. The duty officer said: “They’ve gone, what more can we do?” I burst into tears and put the phone down. This is another crime “unreported” and so, according to the stats, it never happened.

The South African Human Rights Commission last week observed that South Africans “still remain unsafe at their homes”. We don’t need statements of what we know; we need creative thinking and action.

We’re increasingly getting the blame placed on the significant number of illegal immigrants in our country for criminality. While other countries register illegal immigrants, we don’t. The approach is similar to that the government adopts to Aids and crime: if we ignore it, maybe it will go away. Each week we spend tens of thousands of rands on deporting thousands of illegal immigrants and see two-thirds of them jump off trains before they reach the border.

So we have high deportation costs and no impact on reducing the flow. But what is the impact on criminality? It’s quite simple; if illegal immigrants are undocumented by the South African state, it means that it makes more sense for criminal syndicates to use illegal immigrants than South Africans. Why? Because they are undocumented, their fingerprints can’t be traced and they have no fixed abode. The government wants them to be invisible and they are, so more crime is being done by invisible people; this is how the government aids criminality.

This week I paid R900 toward the guard starting patrols on our street. R500 was toward the hut and R400 is the monthly cost per resident for a 12-hour patrol. In addition, I pay R350 a month for armed response. I also pay taxes. Last month I received a quote of R12 000 to install new burglar bars — R20 000 if I want beams.

I don’t have that sort of money, but most of my neighbours do. They have high walls, electric wiring, CCTV, spikes, razor wire, palisade fencing, electronic gates, alarms inside their homes. We have millions of rands’ worth of security on our street and guess what? It doesn’t stop the criminals.

The only thing that could is effective policing, a criminal justice system that doesn’t give bail as easily as it does and prisons that hold criminals for their full term. That will only happen once we have political leaders who don’t quibble with crime statistics, but instead commit themselves to protecting law-abiding South Africans from harm.

It would help too if we had a police commissioner who was respected for integrity.