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Crime the beloved country
| Date: |
27 September 2009 07:00 |
| Producer: |
Bernadette Cook
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| Presenter: |
Bongani Bingwa
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| Researcher: |
Wynand Grobler
Susan Comrie
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
On Wednesday this week police minister Nathi Mtwetwa released the latest crime statistics - revealing that the crimes we fear the most are on the rise.
Police Secretary Jenny Irish-Quobosheane says the police are not shying away from their responsibilities.
Jenny Irish-Quobosheane (Secretary of police): 'We recognise and we've admitted that we have to deal with this. I think when the minister presented the crimes stats it wasn't business as usual. He actually started upfront - before the stats were even presented - saying, 'These are our problems, and these are the areas I'm not happy about,' and even [in] the areas which he was happy about he acknowledged that we still have to do more in those areas.'
Although some crimes have come down, others have increased. The area most affected is business: armed robberies, shoplifting and commercial crimes are escalating.
Bongani Bingwa (Carte Blanche presenter): 'While there has been a considerable drop in the number of bank robberies, small businesses continue to be easy targets and maybe they need this 'no nonsense' tough approach that the banks have adopted.'
Liquor store owner Raphael Pestana has been targeted by gangs three times this year alone. The first time in January they were slick - in and out in a flash. The second incident was far more brazen. First the group of around 15 criminals examined their options and then they lined up one of the vehicles to ram through the roller door. They literally ripped the door off and stormed into the store.
Raphael Pestana (Businessman): 'The stock they took, it was quite a bit. I mean they were here with four bakkies, a few vehicles that they had and they were inside my store for about 14-and-a-half minutes... so they were here for a pretty long time.'
Raphael has since hired a security guard and has placed a barrier in front of his store to try and prevent a repeat incident. Despite these measures, he was robbed and pistol whipped a few weeks ago.
Raphael: 'He persisted on hitting me and carrying on, and carrying on. He whacked me with the barrel of the gun on my head and when he saw that there was blood, then he left me alone. There was one customer that was attacked. She sort of refused to give her handbag...'
Bongani: 'Businesses seem to be more of a target?'
Jenny: 'We need a more proactive approach, as police, to those businesses. What are the things that make those small businesses vulnerable and how can we, in partnership with small business, big business, other government departments, actually try and reduce those vulnerabilities?'
Michael Broughton from the Consumer Goods Council says crime is being displaced.
Michael Broughton (Director: Crime Prevention, CGC): 'Some years ago they used to attack CIT vans and that was the big thing. So they attacked CIT vans, CIT vans then armoured themselves... they drive around like tanks. The criminal mind is continuously looking at this whole thing and saying to himself, 'Where is the weak link?''.
He believes businesses need to become a hard target for criminals.
Michael: 'Business is looking to itself, certainly in the retail sphere, the shopping centre sphere... we're looking to ourselves and saying, 'What can we do to stop this scourge?''
Bongani: 'According to the latest statistics: In Gauteng, for example, for the 29 categories of crime listed, 20 have shown a significant increase, and these include house robbery, sexual crimes, and even murder.'
Compare our [South Africa: 18 148] annual murder statistics to Australia [230], Canada [580] and England [UK: 648] and it's off the graph.
Bongani: 'It looks like a sleepy holiday town, but residents of Cullinan, north of Pretoria, say crime here is out of control. Many of them have been attacked, but they are vowing to fight back against the criminals and take control of their streets.'
Last week residents of this picturesque town marched to create awareness of the brutal murders and violent robberies that are ripping their community apart.
They're spurred by memories of Pieter van der Berg and his wife Madeleine. Both in their 60s, the couple lived a good life just outside the town. Peter took pride in his garden, his house and adored his grandchildren. But on the 11th of July this year the couple was attacked at home recalls their daughter, Teresa.
Teresa Stander: 'They attacked him outside and brought him into the house. Three men tied his hands together and held a knife at his throat. And my mother heard voices in the passage, so she opened the bathroom door and saw that they were restraining my father. And then they said to her that she should come out... if she locks the door they will shoot her dead through the door.'
Madeleine emerged and took them to the safe as they demanded.
Teresa: 'Then my mother heard a gunshot. When they came back into the room they said to her, 'The old man won't co-operate.' And then they told her to unlock the safe. She had to climb over his body in the passage to the spare room where the safe was, which she then unlocked for them. They shook out everything that was in there in search of money. They dressed up in my father's suit and showed her what they looked like in his clothes.'
Bongani: 'What - they showed her?'
Teresa: 'Yes, and then they asked her where the shoes were. And when she took them back to the room to show them where the shoes were, they then pushed her into his wardrobe and locked it.'
They left Teresa's mother locked in the cupboard, set the house alight and left with their loot.
Teresa: 'She banged against the cupboard until she managed to get the cupboard open and get out. When she got out she saw her bed was on fire and when she got into the passage she saw a pile of papers that had been set alight beside her father's body. She tried to drag him out, but he was too heavy for her...'
Teresa's mother rushed to neighbours for help. Within minutes the house was swarming with police, neighbours and friends.
Bongani: 'When you arrived here, what did you see?'
Teresa: 'Oh, when we arrived here - the house was in flames. My mother sat here in a bakkie. Her hair was singed. She had her pyjamas on because she was about to get changed, and this is all she had to her name. There were lots of police. My father's body was lying outside on the grass. They had covered him with a jacket. I just wanted to go and look. When I got to him and I looked at his face, he was snow white.'
To date no one has been arrested for this heinous crime. Returning and looking through the rubble and devastation two months later, Teresa is still clearly traumatised. The house, which was still standing after the fire, has been plundered, brick by brick. And the people responsible for the ransacking continued with impunity despite our camera presence.
Bongani: 'We've found some people on the property. This man is digging what seems to be a tree and I just want to ask him why he's doing this... what he thinks gives him the right to do this.'
Bongani: 'May I ask you - what are you doing here?'
Man: 'I'm removing this tree.'
Bongani: 'Who gave you permission?'
Man: 'I've seen other people doing it.'
Bongani: 'You do know it's someone's property?'
Man: 'Really?'
Teresa: 'It was such a beautiful place - it looked like a paradise. My mother made the garden so beautiful. If you look today, there is nothing left.'
Lawlessness is rife here. Down the road in Rayton, popular lawyer, father and grandfather Doppies Cilliers was gunned down in his house for a few small household items. His son Johnny found his father dead in front of his door.
Bongani: 'Is it hard for you to come back here?'
Johnny Cilliers: 'Yes it is - I relive this every day of my life.'
Bullet holes in the floor under his bed are the only tell-tale signs of what happened - the police have no leads.
Johnny: 'But I had very poor service from the police in any case. They haven't been back here since. There is just a statement from me, which is just two paragraphs long.'
Bongani: 'We've spoken to two families who have been victims of terrible crimes. Why are we still seeing the maximum pain inflicted when really only very few items are stolen?'
Jenny: 'All we can say to those families... because we are equally as horrified... all we can say to those families is that we really are committing ourselves to actually try and do whatever we can to actually address this issue.'
Even if the police did find the murderers, it won't bring Johnny's father Doppies back.
Johnny: 'My father and I were...not just a father and son. We were probably the biggest pals that there ever was.'
Teresa is also grappling with the injustice of what has happened.
Teresa: 'We don't know why it happened. It's just so incomprehensible... and why in such a cruel manner? Why did they want to put my mother in a cupboard and then burn her alive? We cannot accept it.'
With 50 murders a day, we asked criminologist Dr Rudloph Zinn why our society is so violent.
Dr Rudolph Zinn (Criminologist): 'As far as our history is concerned, and that both sides of the struggle, then, were willing to break the law to achieve their aims... and people got used to breaking laws in South Africa and we've become a lawless society. And it seems to be that those people have now become the parents who pass on these values now unfortunately to their children.'
And Rudolph believes frustration also plays a role.
Dr Zinn: 'Expectations created within communities within South Africa - that their conditions or living conditions would change over a short period of time - it's not happening. People are getting frustrated. I think there is also an issue of entitlement. People feel that they have been promised all of a better South Africa. We're not reaching it fast enough.'
Michael: 'People like ourselves, or even the police... we are the sticking plaster on the leprosy of crime. Crime is a blood disease in this country.'
Do we need more police to solve the problem? Rudolph feels the case loads are just too big - and detectives are unable to cope.
Dr Zinn: 'The information that I do have - we have about 25 000 police detectives in South Africa, of which about 3- to 4 000 have not been trained as yet as detectives, and a number of them also being in positions of command, so they're not able to do the actual investigation. And we end up with a figure of about 110 case dockets per detective per month.'
Jenny: 'In the minister's budget speech earlier this year - the need to actually increase the number of detectives in the service and to make sure that we don't just increase detectives - it's not just about numbers - it's about improving the skills of those detectives [too].'
The police are forging ahead with a comprehensive plan to tackle the problem.
Jenny: 'We've got to beef up our intelligence. Our intelligence has got to support the detective services; it's got to support our crime prevention. We've got to start formalising our partnerships, bringing people on board in a much more meaningful way.'
Let's hope it's not too late for businessmen like Raphael.
Raphael: 'Do I see a future here? At this present point?... no.'
Bongani: 'What would you like to see happen?'
Teresa: 'I would like to see justice served for what they did. They must pay for it. I don't know what the sentence will be, but I know they will have to pay for a very, very long time for what they did.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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