We may blame AfriForum for the degrading treatment the country’s leaders were subjected to at the White House, debate to no end whether President Cyril Ramaphosa handled the tense meeting well, or find some other bogeyman to blame for our woes.
The truth though is that we have not paid enough attention to the horrors of crime in our country. For the most part, we focus on what is en vogue. The media has tried to refocus attention on the spectre of violent crimes. Crimes against children, women, farmers and farm workers or even what Johann Rupert referred to as “aliens” — illegal foreign nationals. Some have erroneously thought we put crime on front pages because “when it bleeds it leads”. Yet, over time, the impact of crime on major life decisions and commerce was becoming obvious.
Take a look at the Joburg inner city. Like America, it is home of the brave. Not in a good way. Crime and grime have pushed all self-respecting companies outward to Rosebank and Sandton, if not Cape Town. The super wealthy are holed up in Sandhurst, or fighting for space with wealthy foreigners on the Atlantic seaboard for eye-watering views of Robben Island and Lion’s Head. While the rich build walls that create a veneer of security around them, the rest of us stew in rampant criminality. We depend on half-literate constables to prevent or solve complex crimes.
Our leaders had no option but to make uncomfortable concessions about how bad crime is in our country
If you had any doubts about the scars we all carry because of crime, you needed to listen not to the modern day Pinocchio, also known as US President Donald Trump, and the many lies he shared on Wednesday — but to our leaders.
When confronted with a blend of real crime incidents, including a farm attack we published on TimesLIVE, and misinformation, our leaders had no option but to make uncomfortable concessions about how bad crime is in our country.
First Ramaphosa conceded, then agriculture minister John Steenhuisen. It was interesting for me that it took Rupert, the richest man in South Africa but also one of the most discourteous and brusque, to forcefully remove race from what essentially is a crime problem affecting everybody. Rupert reminded Trump of a time in the 1970s when they both lived in New York, when crime was as out of control and gangs in charge as we now have it in our country.
Zingiswa Losi, the Cosatu president, hit the nail on the head: “We are a violent nation,” she said. In rural areas, she added, it is mostly black women who are raped and whose throats are slit. “The problem in South Africa is not necessarily about race, it’s about crime.”
Therein lies our achilles heel.
When the brute in the Oval Office said repeatedly, “They died brutal deaths, their heads chopped off ...” — referring to massacres in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — our leaders had to admit we have a crime problem and beseechingly pleaded that “we need your help”.
Ernie Els showed us at the meeting just what it means not to prepare him. We may ridicule him for talking about how America propped up apartheid South Africa, showcasing his ignorance, but what was important to Retief Goosen is what is important to all of us — how safe our families are, even behind the electric fences.
As a country, we may also send delegations across the globe to talk up investors, host investment conferences, or explain away the need for empowerment to get Trump’s buddy Elon Musk’s Starlink to set up here. But the biggest elephant in that Oval Office was our mismanagement of policing. Given that we left at home the minister of police and the presidential security special adviser tells a different story about woeful absence of preparation.
We can argue that crime, in fact, disproportionately affects black people more than it does whites. It may be true and may be our get-out-of-jail card in the Oval Office, but it’s not a good argument to make. It’s not a good situation to wear on our shoulders. We should be doing much more on crime than we are doing.
We may also argue that AfriForum, despite its protestations, is really verkrampte. We may say the attempt at humiliating our president was in part sponsored by them. That their trips to Washington, and meetings with officials in Trump’s office about how Afrikaners are under siege in South Africa, are the reasons why we were subjected to lies about Goma videos and lies about graves on the side of the road. These things may be true or false, but they don’t solve our main problem. And where AfriForum’s adventurism meets merchants of misinformation, truth becomes a casualty. Fact-checking is passé.
If you work for the US’s communication machinery, you really must hang your head in shame. The local spokesperson for the American embassy, Rubani Trimiew, is not answering media queries about misinformation spread by the most powerful man on Earth, Trump. Who could blame him? Defending Trump must be the most embarrassing thing. But I digress.
The truth is that even though AfriForum is to blame for some of the bad PR our country receives, they remain a symptom of a problem. Every country has its lunatic fringe. We have ours. AfriForum are our irritants. But we must not miss the woods for the trees. Yes, they are loud, but our problem is crime, not the minions in AfriForum.
If we solve the crime problem, we obviate those Oval Office spectacles, we create an environment in which companies can invest, we spur economic growth, we give our country, especially its children, a fighting chance at a great future.
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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