SOUTH AFRICA’S apartheid history has created a culture in which people see violence as a normal way to resolve their problems, according to a long-awaited report on the nature of violent crime in the country.
The research was commissioned in 2007 by former safety and security minister Charles Nqakula to find out why South Africa has one of the most violent societies in the world.
While many societies have experienced widespread violence during civil wars or under brutal dictatorships, few have become as dangerous as South Africa’s in their post-oppression era, a fact that has caused much debate in the ANC-led country.
South Africa’s crime statistics for 2009 show that about 17,000 people were murdered over that 12-month period and more than 100 rapes, a crime that is known to be severely under reported by the victims, were reported to the police each day.
Addressing the police portfolio committee Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, executive director Adele Kirsten said the findings did not imply that a group of people or the nation as a whole was inherently violent.
“What it [the report] wants to say is that given our history, given our experience of violence . . . we have begun to see violence as normative, we see it as acceptable to use violence . . . we see it as legitimate.
“This is what makes us unique. Our migrant labour system of apartheid fundamentally destroyed families. We are living with the legacy of that. I know that often in the public discourse people want to say apartheid is 15 years gone.
“It is not, it remains in our day- to-day interactions. It remains present in where we live, and it remains present in who is most vulnerable to be a victim of crime,” Ms Kirsten said.
The report accuses the mining industry as being the sector in which South African men were first exposed to extreme violence and from there, it was taken into the townships and used against women and children.
Then during the apartheid era, the state sponsorship of violence further contributed to create “a culture of violence that has reproduced itself ever since”, the report claims.
It adds that the country’s prisons also strengthened the violent tendencies of many inmates rather than rehabilitate them.
Other factors that have contributed to the high levels of violent crime include inequality, poverty, an ambivalence towards the law, a weak justice system, the proliferation of firearms and the poor socialisation of young people.
However, some members of parliament questioned the value of the committee’s research.
Sindi Chikunga, chairwoman of the committee, said: “I was looking for something unique, something new. We all know about poverty and education, but I was looking for something in the report that will say this is unique about South Africa.”
Ms Kirsten responded that there was no single cause of violence.