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Crime eats at soul of South Africa

By Tim Butcher in Johannesburg

THE scale of South Africa's crime epidemic does not register with outsiders until they experience it.

Only then is it possible to see how crime is rotting the soul of South Africa, driving good people away and threatening every corner of society. After living in Johannesburg for six months, I had been well aware of violent crime.

It fills the daily papers, dominates dinner party chatter and is evident on every residential street, where electric fences and armed response protection teams are the norm. But it was only when my neighbour was attacked this week that it really came home to me.

It was about 2 o'clock on a late summer afternoon when they came for my neighbour, who asked me not to name her. I'll call her "Mary". She was gardening - when I visited previously she proudly showed me her new pond and rockery - and was intent on a herbaceous border when she heard the faintest click.

It was the sound of a pistol being cocked, before it was pressed against her head. She was led into the house, had her hands and feet tied and was then terrorised for hours. They doused her in petrol and said they were going to light it and watch her burn to death.

Now, Mary is no SAS-trained field operative. She is a South African divorcee with two children and a jolly laugh. How she coped, I do not know, as they ransacked the house, telling her all the time they were going to kill her and do the same to her son when he got home.

She lived. They filled her car with her best possessions and drove off. It was hours before Mary was found. All that time she did not know if they were coming back to kill her. Mary's story is not exceptional for Johannesburg. By the time the police turned up she was just another statistic in a city with a huge crime rate.

But for me Mary's ordeal brought home just what damage crime is doing. When my girlfriend went round to see Mary, the once buoyant soul was broken. Red-eyed and anxious, Mary put her arms around Jane and said: "I hope this does not put you off from staying." It was a generous remark, but in her heart of hearts Mary knows her life will never be the same.

She can no longer go into her house alone, let alone sleep there. I fear it is only a matter of time before she becomes another statistic, leaving South Africa for good, getting on a plane to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or elsewhere in a process of emigration that has been given a new name by those who stay behind.

They call it the "chicken run", but as the net immigration-emigration figures this year register for the sixth year running an outflow of thousands, the stalwarts are dwindling.

Last week I met a game ranger who was the last of four brothers to stay. My gym instructor left after Christmas. I just bought a car from a doctor who is going to Britain. They all say that the reason they are leaving South Africa is the risk of crime.

There are many reasons for the crime epidemic. The poverty among much of the population is intense and often getting no better. Apartheid bequeathed an inefficient and largely untrustworthy police force that the African National Congress has failed to put right.

So sensitive is President Thabo Mbeki's government about the subject, that it has stopped publishing crime figures. But until crime is dealt with, South Africa will continue to export its best and otherwise patriotic people.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2001