Two events in recent days, though seemingly unrelated, both speak to our dire crime situation. In Soshanguve, Pretoria, armed criminals shot dead five-year-old Ditebogo Phalane as they hijacked his father’s car outside their house. And in KwaZulu-Natal, police killed six armed suspects wanted in connection with several violent crimes, including cash-in-transit heists.
The Pretoria murder illustrates the ruthless modus operandi of hijacking syndicates, and violent criminals in general, who seem to operate with impunity, putting every citizen’s life in danger, whether they are in the street or in their homes.
Our response to the crime crisis has been somewhat schizophrenic.
On the one hand we blame the police — whose failings are by now well-chronicled though many of whom try to do their best — for failing to curb the criminality; on the other, when police do turn the tables on the criminals, many of us are quick to accuse them of bloodthirsty brutality.
In that topsy-turvy world, police are often portrayed as ‘shoot-to-kill’ psychopaths — presumably they should rather engage criminals in polite negotiations over their surrender
But the stark reality is that the police are not dealing with innocent altar boys, or delinquents armed with penknives. These are people who carry high-calibre weapons, who use explosives to blow up cash vans and ATMs, and who think nothing of killing anyone who gets in their way.
It is true that the country suffers high levels of poverty and unemployment, with too many of our compatriots living below the breadline. But that cannot justify the killing of law-abiding citizens by criminals.
In the now-familiar instances where the police have shot dead armed criminals, some have cast the officers as the bad guys and, perversely, the criminals as the victims. In that topsy-turvy world, police are often portrayed as “shoot-to-kill” psychopaths — presumably they should rather engage criminals in polite negotiations over their surrender.
Truth is that it is the gun-wielding criminals who have been shooting and killing innocent citizens. Ask the families of little Ditebogo; or of Kaizer Chiefs footballer Luke Fleurs, shot and killed by criminals who hijacked his car; or of one of South Africa’s biggest music talents, Lucky Dube, murdered in a hijacking some years ago. The criminals even attack places of worship, for crying out loud.
Sometimes the question is asked whether, by using overwhelming force against armed criminals, the police are not contributing to the escalation of violence. In fact, it is the criminals who have raised the stakes — and have been doing for many years, breaking into people’s homes or attacking them in the streets. They are arming themselves with increasingly sophisticated weapons to fight the police.
So, we may have the wrong end of the stick here. As much as we might aspire to being a more humane and rights-based society, where the police provide a service to the public rather than being a feared, gun-toting enforcement agency, South Africa is not a country for the “bobby on the beat”, armed only with a truncheon.
So when faced with armed criminals, what are the police to do? Play nice and sue for peace? The point some apparently miss here is that the police, despite their many weaknesses and faults, are still all that stands between the citizenry and uncontrolled criminality. It might not seem so to some, but the service today is at the front line of our standoff with criminals.
If we demonise and delegitimise the police, and they don’t hold the line, we’ll descend into the lawless chaos of vigilantism where only the strongest, the most heavily armed, survive. A place where there’s no policing, or where it can occur only with the blessing of organised gangs.
Lest it be forgotten, the ultimate intention of armed criminals, who don’t hesitate to shoot it out with the police and kill innocent citizens, is to prevail over society as a whole. In Haiti, a gang lord called “Barbecue” has just achieved exactly that.
By virtue of being armed, criminals have appropriated to themselves the right to take whatever from whomever — be it a car, money or a cellphone. And to kill and to rape, too.
Amid the criminality besieging us, should it not be that all society unreservedly condemns anyone who points a gun at a police officer, and that we abandon the empathy that some feel for criminals?
This is not to argue for giving the police carte blanche. Our police do, indeed, need to be better trained in all aspects of their jobs. And, equally importantly, they should be held accountable for how they interact with the public, including the most egregious criminals. The rotten apples in police ranks must also be brought to book.
Of course, the country also has to attend to the stratospheric unemployment rate — bemoaned day in and day out without much action to reverse it. Joblessness fuels our terrible poverty levels and draws young people, especially, into the criminal world.
But in the fight against criminality, we commit a grievous error to cast the police as invariably being the villains of the piece — they are not.
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