Africa

Ever wonder if anyone could possibly fall for those obnoxious Nigerian email scams? Wonder no more.

A seemingly ubiquitous crime in South Africa in recent months has been the bombing and looting of ATM machines, especially, but not exclusively, in urban areas, particularly in Gauteng. The professionalization of this crime, and its recent profusion caused the Democratic Alliance to call for a probe of ATM bombings last month. Perhaps the DA’s (politically motivated — let’s not kid ourselves) demands have yielded fruit. Early on Thursday the Gauteng police busted an ATM bombing “syndicate.” It remains to be seen if this is part of a larger operation, but it indicates at least an attempt to get to grips with what has grown from a bizarre agate-type story to a real epiphenomenon.

The controversy over the role of the elite special investigations unit known as the Scorpions has festered in South Africa since almost the inception of that organization. Because of the way in which the Scorpions have been kept separate from the regular police services there has been considerable tension between the SAPS and the new organization. Naturally some of the questions that emerge are: Who is to blame for the divisaions? Who is to blame for the apparent mismanagement and misuse of the Scorpions? Who is to blame for the inability of the new, and in some circles privileged, to make a serious dent in crime? And what role do elite organizations have to play in policing in South Africa?

At least on the contentiousness between SAPS and the Scorpions one voice has weighed in. The police will not be thrilled by his identity or by what he has to say:

The beleaguered Scorpions received support from an unlikely quarter on Wednesday when a former member of the supposedly hostile SA Police Service spilled the beans on what he believes is a “dysfunctional” and “sick” police service that is being destroyed from within by its own senior leadership.

Superintendent Ivan Myers was dismissed as commander of the Maitland dog unit earlier this year for speaking to the media about a controversy relating to the underfeeding of police dogs at the unit.

The accusations of police dysfunction are a bit tough to dispute. Whether or not this serves to justify the Scorpions is another question, but certainly it is in that organization’s interest to reveal fissures within the police and to paint that organization as helpless.

It was easy for upper-middle-class South Africans to wring their hands over the xenophobic violence that seized townships in recent week. But now that some of those victims are being treated as internal refugees and are being settled near leafy suburbs? Not in my back yard.

The ongoing xenophobic violence in South Africa has now spread beyond Johannesburg and may well explode into a national crisis. Metrorail authorities are beefing up security in anticipation that the trains are ripe for attacks on presumed foreigners and others.

The recriminations, of course, have already begun, with many pointing fingers at Thabo Mbeki’s government. For a roundup of South African press opinion see here.

Crime is the domestic issue that evokes the most handwringing in South Africa, especially among a certain segment (read: affluent) of the white population. And crime certainly is bad, especially in the most highly populated areas. Virtually (and perhaps literally) all South Africans of every race and social class knows someone who has been victimized by crime, and while crime, and especially violent crime, looms large in the white South African mind, blacks are the most common victims of crime in the country.

 And yet it oftentimes seems that fears of crime really represent a surrogate for a whole range of fears and insecurities over the issue of change and transformation in South Africa. The narrative about crime, in other words, tends to be more unyielding than crime itself.

It is thus important to note that there appears to have been a drop in violent crime rates in the Western Cape of 32%, which is a remarkable achievement. Obviously one wonders if some of the statistics have not been cooked (for my American readers who watched The Wire, the greatest show, certainly the greatest drama, in the history of television, this question looms especially large) but if these numbers are even remotely representative of actual conditions on the ground, South Africans should rejoice. Sometimes, after all, narratives change. 

Chaos in Alexandra continued to escalate through the weekend, though people are doing the best they can to live their lives as normal and many claim not to have noticed the violence that has largely been driven by xenophobia. Calm prevailed on Tuesday morning, but one wonders if the tenuous peace will hold.  Stranded and fearful, hundreds of foreign residents of Alexandra are squatting at the police station until either alternative accomodations emerge or some guarantee of calm prevails.

Obviously the root of the violence in the cramped Johannesburg township is the grim nature of much of urban life. The economically vulnerable need to find someone to lash out at, and foreigners make for a logical scapegoat. Xenophobia, though real, thus becomes an exciuse and a catchall justification for what poverty has brought.   

With 2010 and the World Cup, and thus South Africa’s global close-up, fast approaching, the country’s tourist industry will become increasingly prominent. Moeketsi Mosola, chief executive of South African Tourism, is worried that crime is South Africa’s Achilles’ heel and that all of the work going into preparations for 2010 will be for naught if crime is not brought under control. Stories such as those coming out of Alexandra, in which foreigners have been brutally attacked, will serve only to underscore Mosola’s concerns. The fact that the foreign victims are anything but tourists probably will be lost to those living abroad who are considering a trip to South Africa but worry about crime. But more important, the events in Alex reveal the tensions within South African society, where economic insecurity and xenophobia merge with catastrophic results. It is all well and good to worry about crime because of the effect it may have on tourists, but it is even more important to address crime because of the ongoing effects it has on South Africans, and to address the underlying causes that lead to crime to begin with.

Times are certainly strange in South African politics in a post-Polokwane world. After all, where else could a non-violent, indeed, from a constitutional vantage point rather smooth, inter-party leadership transition lead to what is effectively a lame-duck political status for many of those in power across the country at the national, provincial, and local levels? Indicative of this strange set of curcumstances, Thabo Mbeki, whose handling of the Zimbabwe crisis only served to damage further an already crumbling reputation, caved in his support for the controversial Scorpions crime-fighting unit largely because of pressure from Jacob Zuma and Zuma’s supporters and that organization will soon disband unceremoniously.

Clearly Mbeki is aware of this status, as is Zuma, and to their credit, neither man is pushing too hard in the face of realities: Thabo Mbeki is still the president of South Africa; he will not be a year or so from now. Zuma knows that this gives him leverage, but so far he has been loathe to use it too obviously. It remains to be seen whether this tenuous situation can hold. And the standard caveat applies: If Zuma goes down on corruption charges, the whole dynamic of the game changes overnight. Zuma knows this. So too does Thabo Mbeki.

Current crime and fears of crime, coupled with the contentiousness of the apartheid past (and the opposition to it) seem to be encouraging a debate over the role of guns in South African society. Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya explores the questions involved in this column at the Mail & Guardian.