| Quagmire! |
Government had moved many different issues to the top of its agenda, including
"It would appear the government does not actually consider crime a priority,
Leon suggested President Thabo Mbeki had lived with VIP protection and armoured cars for so long, "he has forgotten what most people have to deal with" when it came to crime. The DA leader said the country's justice system was in disarray. "According to the South African Law Commission, only 6% of violent crimes reported to police result in a conviction, and 75% do not even make it to court. Last week, (Safety and Security Minister) Charles Nqakula admitted that 668 police dockets had gone missing and 48 had been stolen in the last two years. Moreover, half of crimes are not reported at all, according to the Institute of Security Studies." Leon described SA's overcrowded prisons as "universities of crime", and said they were not rehabilitating criminals.
An alarming recent trend was the rise in crime involving youths. "(A total of) 44% of the children under 14 who were taken to Durban mortuaries in 2004 had been shot dead, for example." Young people were also, increasingly, the perpetrators of crime. "The number of children convicted of violent crime jumped by 5% from 2003 to 2004, according to the National Institution for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders (Nicro). One of the reasons for the rise in youth crime is that South Africa is failing to produce employment opportunities for young people," he said. South Africa needed to muster the political will to make the fight against crime a non-negotiable priority, Leon said.
| Ditch the klepto-thugocrat mentality, and you've got a good start. |