EDITORIAL: Lawlessness reigns in SA

“We cannot surrender the freedom and safety of our people to criminals. What we are witnessing in our province is totally unacceptable, and police have assured us that they are working round the clock to arrest these criminals. We are confident that the police will win this battle.” 

The above is an attempt by Sipho Hlomuka, community safety MEC in KwaZulu-Natal, at raising the spirits of South Africans, who woke up to shocking news on Saturday that Kiernan Forbes — a chart-topping rap star known by stage name AKA — was shot fatally at a restaurant in Durban. 

Sadly, it is safe to assume that many of us are not reassured that his words will amount to anything tangible in extricating SA from an unwanted position as one of the most dangerous places to live.

For starters, murder surged by more than 60% over the past decade, putting SA per capita rate at 42 murders per 100,000.  That puts SA in the three most dangerous countries in the world.  Worse still,  there’s a chance that the criminals will get away with murder. According to the SA Police Service statistics, as crunched by the Institute for Securities Studies, the ability of the police to solve murder has fallen 55% since 2012. 

The list of unsolved murders in SA is long: the murder of national football team goalkeeper and captain Senzo Meyiwa, allegedly shot dead in a botched burglary in 2014, remains unsolved. Who can forget the mass shooting at a tavern in Soweto in June 2022 when a group of men arrived in a minibus taxi and opened fire on patrons? This too, alongside many other crimes since then, has remained unresolved. 

As frightening as this police ineptitude is, the biggest danger is that more and more South Africans will lose faith in the police and criminal justice system. What will follow is that people will have no reason to report a crime, leading to more crime as legally cynical citizens will be forced to take the law into their own hands because that’s the only logical step left to take. 

We are edging ever closer to a state of anarchy. The least President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government can do is to acknowledge that SA policing is in need of a foundational revamp, and come up with a coherent, credible action plan to make SA safer.