EDINBURGH — The high, and rising, Cape Town murder rate has attracted the attention of international analysts. After years in which the rate has reportedly declined, there has been a sharp uptick in killings. According to South African crime analysts, much of the violence is linked to Cape Flats gangs that mimic the behaviour of gangs in US cities. A corrupt police force has nurtured criminal activity. Don’t be fooled by the images of beautiful beaches and the distinctive mountain, is the message from The Economist to its global audience; when you venture out into the scenic Cape Town landscape you run the risk of being a crime victim. – Jackie Cameron
By Thulasizwe Sithole
Cape Town is back in the world spotlight in connection with its high, and rising, murder rate.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The Economist has run a feature on the scourge of gangs in the Western Cape, exploring why there has been a sharp uptick after years of decline.
“Since the advent of democracy in 1994, South Africa as a whole has had less of a violent vibe. The murder rate – the best indicator of violent crime, as most cases are reported – has fallen by almost half, from 69 per 100,000 people in 1994/95 to 36 in 2017/18,” it tells its global audience.
“International data are patchy, but they suggest that since the end of apartheid South Africa went from being the world’s third-most-murderous country to the seventh. Nevertheless, its murder rate has recently ticked up, from a low of 30 per 100,000 in 2011/12,” says The Economist. It points out that this is the biggest jump since 1994.
Quoting University of Cape Town crime expert Anine Kriegler, The Economist says Cape Town’s murder rate has risen from 43 to 69 per 100,000 between 2009/10 and 2017/18. “Last year’s rise was the biggest since comparable data became available in 2005/06. Today its rate is more than twice that of Johannesburg and higher than in any large city outside the Americas, according to the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think-tank.”
That, notes The Economist, may surprise those who associate Cape Town with beaches and Table Mountain. “But a short drive from some of the priciest property in Africa are the Cape Flats, a patchwork of townships. Many were dumping grounds when the apartheid regime removed “Coloureds” (people of mixed race) from the inner city in the 1960s. Unemployment and poverty are endemic. Most children grow up fatherless. In one precinct, Philippi East, 93% of households were victims of crime in 2016.”
The Flats also contain gangs, explains The Economist. “In few cities globally are they so deeply rooted. The ‘numbers’ prison gangs have such complex rules that they speak their own language.”
Street gangs have entrenched themselves to the extent that a higher share of young people are affiliated to gangs than in cities such as Baltimore, reflects the financial magazine.
Gangs are not the only source of murder in the city but have caused a “substantial portion” of the recent surge, Mark Shaw, a criminologist who runs the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime tells The Economist. Since 2011 every police precinct in a known gang area has seen a rise in the murder rate.
Today about 100,000 people on the Flats belong to more than 130 gangs, in an unstable patchwork of alliances. As members pass in and out of jail, lines blur between prison and street gangs, creating new rivalries, says The Economist.
“These gangs are increasingly sophisticated and commercialised operations, which use a mix of street muscle and assassinations to amass power. The biggest street gangs are fronts for vast mafia-like enterprises, complete with links to policemen and politicians.”
As more heroin is hipped through South Africa, partly because other routes have become trickier, domestic use of the drug has risen. From 2000 to 2015 drug-related arrests in the Western Cape rose nearly sixfold.
“There are a lot more guns around, too. The rise in the murder rate in Cape Town matches the arrival of high-powered weapons in the Flats, notes Guy Lamb of the University of Cape Town.”
In 2016 Chris Prinsloo, a former police colonel, pleaded guilty to selling 2,400 guns to an arms-dealer who sold them on to gangsters.The Prinsloo case points to a broader problem: “the rottenness” of the South African Police Service (SAPS), adds The Economist.
