Tangent: Crime in SA

I will finish our vacation soonish. But here I wanted to give some updates on crazy stories I've been told by fellow PCVs concerning crime in South Africa.

WARNING TO MOM: This section may scare you. Please don't read it till we're safely home if it will make you worried. Peruse at your own risk. :)

Yesterday we were told that someone had jumped the fence to the backpackers where we're staying and was trying to crawl in through a window in our room to steal stuff. It got me thinking, and so I wanted to put all these accounts down in one place. These stories not only make us glad that we're leaving soon, but also that we've been placed in a rural village, where crime is not as bad as in the cities.

First, an NGO volunteer in our group who lives in a city was just mugged for the second time. The first time, a month or two ago, the guys said they'd shoot him if he didn't give them everything. He lost his laptop, clothes, and the keys to his house. More recently he was robbed while the attacker(s) kept a knife pressed against his side the whole time.

Some other volunteers, also placed in a city, woke up one night to find someone in their room, rummaging through their stuff. They'd forgotten to fasten the deadbolt that night and the burglar helped herself (they said it looked like a teenage girl) to some clothes and a cell phone. This same volunteer said that his NGO supervisor has been gassed and robbed while sleeping, and had highway robbers puncture her tires, forcing her to pull over and give them everything.

A female volunteer who was placed in a township (informal settlement/slum--a very bad placement for anyone, especially a single female) has finally gotten a site change. She has repeatedly heard gunshots near her house and her area is very dangerous overall. She said that the people there have become so scared of the violence that, contrary to their culture, they will lock their doors and turn off the lights if they hear someone being robbed outside. Girls in her township were constanly being kidnapped at parties and she (the PCV)suspected that it was connected to human trafficking.

The above stories are only those that I've heard directly. Others have told me that many volunteers have had several cell phones stolen, some at knife-/gunpoint. Some PCVs have had up to 9 cell phones stolen over two years. There are doubtless many more. As I've told some of you, the official crime statistics put South Africa on par with Columbia and ahead of Afghanistan in violent deaths. Most recently, Peace Corps reported that there have been a large number of armed robberies at the Jo'burg Int'l Airport where we arrived. Some gangs have marked wealthy foreigners as they arrive, following them to their hotels and robbing/murdering them there. But, luckily for us, most crime happens in heavily populated areas. Many South Africans say that much of the new crime wave is due to the large influx of impoverished Zimbabwean refugees looking for work in the cities. (Zimbabwe has an 80% unemployment rate and the inflation rate is officially at 165,000%, meaning that a 10 million Zimbabwean dollar note can't buy bread. That rate is expected to hit 24 million percent by the end of the year.)

We haven't heard of many problems in our village, besides the time when our host sister's ex-boyfriend climbed through the window of our host family's house (in our yard) and beat the living daylights out of her new boyfriend. We heard a lot of screaming but didn't know what happened until the next day. That was scary. I asked a policeman in training in our village about crime and he said "Crime in Batlharos is 80%." I have no idea what that means, but it sounds ominous. So I guess we have plenty of problems in our village.

The South African police force is notoriously corrupt from top to bottom, which exacerbates the crime problem tremendously. The national police chief was indicted and resigned due to corruption charges. (As far as anecdotal evidence of this goes, we were once on a koombi that was stopped at a traffic checkpoint and the policeman asked the driver if he had a "cool drink" (soda). The driver said he didn't, but did have a pie. The cop was almost incredulous. He asked for it, disapprovingly, and after tasting it, waved us on. I can't be sure, but it seemed like a bribe to me.)

As South Africa, and the rest of the continent, anticipate the FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010, many of us can only wince at the inevitable crime wave that will plague the influx of spectators. At least one of the FIFA executives who were here for planning has already been mugged.

And as Jacob Zuma, a fatuous thug with rape and corruption charges under his belt already, assumes the presidency next year, we can only pray that things won't get too much worse.