Fighting Crime

Working together we can build a safe South Africa

When we stood in the sun in front of Parliament in May 1996 to celebrate the adoption of our new democratic constitution, the final seal on our transition to democracy, we were a country united; determined to strive together to meet and overcome whatever challenge may face us.

Today, twelve years later, we are called upon to demonstrate once more that unity of purpose, that determination that indeed we can overcome whatever obstacles may lay in our path.

We have not lost that capacity. Indeed, the last decade and more has demonstrated that we are able to work together to build our economy, to provide for the most basic needs of millions of our people, to make unprecedented advances in access to health care and education. We have been able, working together, to play a leading role in the reconstruction of our continent and in forging a better world.

We have not lost that capacity. But we are a called upon now to rediscover that capacity as we turn our attention to tackling crime and to building a safe, peaceful and stable society. We must recapture the spirit of determination that has allowed us to achieve so much already, so that we may work together to defeat this scourge.

We must do this because crime and violence and abuse strike at the very core of our new nation. It undermines the integrity of every citizen, and poisons relations between ourselves. Too often we are frightened of one another. Despite our best efforts, people do not feel safe and so many have been victims of crime that everyone feels a victim.

For the last few days, the Action for a Safe South Africa convention has been developing a programme of action which will attempt to harness the light which shone through our rainbow nation in pursuit of an unassailable objective. This light refracted through our people and became a rainbow -not because we were all colours and languages - but because we had discovered the best in one another.

This best did not come by accident, and when the constitutional assembly sat and constructed our constitution, it did not merely dream up the words which challenge us everyday. Our miracle emerged from a struggle to overcome evil. And we did overcome. We did place on paper the lessons we had learned from overcoming evil, and wrote down what was best about us.

The way to defeat violent crime is not to descend into fear but to harness that determination to overcome.

It is time to organise our people for struggle once again. It is time to find one another's humanity and the common aspirations which will forge alliances between strangers and between unlikely allies. It is time to rediscover the leadership strengths amongst the ordinary people of our country and to ask them to stand up and be counted.

This week, the convention developed a deliberately designed programme to build a safe South Africa. And we have unveiled a charter to which South Africans can subscribe and contribute. Civil society organisations have committed themselves to form the core of an action concentrating its efforts on making sure that no-one fails our society because our society has failed them. This is a struggle that has to be undertaken by all South Africans.

We have done it before. We defeated apartheid. We overcame the violence of the 1980s and 1990s. Action for a Safe South Africa has been reminding us that South Africans guarded the negotiation period through organs like the National Peace Secretariat. Now it is time to guard the democratic gains that are being eroded by violent crime.

We call on all South Africans to open their gates and their curtains - to see what is going on and, instead of just talking about it, complaining or waiting for someone else to do something, to take initiative. Act like a proud citizen - claim your rights and take responsibility. Take charge of your lives and communities.

There are many nay-sayers in our society at the moment. It is not surprising. We all wanted to relax after 1994 and leave it to the few in government and the public service to do everything to make our lives comfortable and to deliver the services which were our right. And life has indeed improved for the majority of people, particularly the poor. But we still have much to do to eradicate the legacy of our apartheid past.

Our efforts to eradicate that legacy are being undermined by violence and criminality. It undermines our ability to build a better life - for what is a better life if it is not safe?

A call to act

We have learnt that building a democratic society is not about leaving it to the few under any circumstances. During a time of crisis, it is the height of irresponsibility. This is not a task that can be left to government alone.

Today we are affirming that there are spaces where civil society has to act. There are sites of struggle which require organised citizens to seek solutions and act in solidarity.

In these spaces the people are the leaders. As emeritus Archbishop Ndungane has written: "It is all too easy to put the poor into a category, a mental ghetto of sorts, and leave them to eke out their existence, hoping that the government will make good on its promises to address the issues: lack of housing, hunger, denial of the basic rights to education and indeed to the hope of a better future. But the poor have their own voice, they know the story of their lives and they know what would improve their lives."

It is not only the poor who will have to act. There are an increasing number of affluent people, people with degrees, people with influence and the power of knowledge and money. There are people who have the privilege of work and the reach of companies, organisations, colleagues, unions, institutions and associations.

To whom much has been given, much will be expected. It is true that some may be able to disinvest from this country - some have done this, either by deliberate choice or by their present lifestyles. But disinvestment is, as we know from our history, a strategy to bring down a state and not to build it.

Now is the time for investment - in the lives of our young people, in our young mothers and fathers and their children, in first time offenders, in the institutions of support which help us knit together our local communities, in social organisation and civic education, in creating an infrastructure in our neighbourhoods which builds public life. Now is the time to bring to the table the creativity and good citizenship that we can be proud of.

We have been accused of being naïve as South Africans. It is said that we created a constitution which was too modern and liberal for our own good. Our justifiable pride in our achievements is said to have become arrogance.

People have said, just wait - and have taken the waves of crime and this year's violence against foreigners as early indications that we are about to fail in our social project.

Our constitution was established to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; and to lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law.

We did not write this as an instruction to government. We did not write this as an instruction to the public service. We wrote this as the people of South Africa.

We are working to build a united nation at peace with ourselves and the world, and we cannot allow criminal violence to divert us from our path.

Protect our country from crime. Build a safe South Africa. Change the world. Why should we not do in this century what we have done in the last? This is our country. There is no-one else who is going to fix it for us - we are the ones who must do it.

This week we began a brave new initiative to take onto ourselves the task of building a safe South Africa, together. And working together, drawing on the richness of our diversity and experience, and sparing neither strength nor effort, I am confident that we will overcome.

** Cyril Ramaphosa is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee. This is an edited extract from an address to the Action for a Safe South Africa Convention, 28 August 2008.

Criminal Justice System

A new look at fighting crime

South Africa's criminal justice system is set for a major overhaul following a comprehensive review of its effectiveness in combating crime and dispensing justice. This review has become the leading project of the justice crime prevention and security cluster of government.

The review seeks to overhaul the criminal justice system and through an effective system of management and coordination, define a process of seamless interconnection between investigations and arrests; prosecutions and adjudication; and detention and rehabilitation.

Members of the public are being asked to contribute to the review by making submissions on what is wrong with the system and how it can be improved.

Briefing the media earlier this week, Charles Nqakula, the minister of safety and security, said it was the cluster's intention to build a solid foundation for the overhauled system because an effective criminal justice system is the best guarantor for the reduction of crime: "Our project drastically to reduce organised and serious and violent crime will produce better outcomes within the context of a better performing Criminal Justice System."

The project, which is being led by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, will look at all elements of the system, how each can work better, and how they can be better integrated.

A number of recommendations have already been made.

In a presentation to parliament's portfolio committees on justice and constitutional development, and safety and security, it said: "The present court process in criminal matters is totally antiquated, a legacy of our apartheid past and not appropriate for a modern society. It thus requires radical transformation."

New processes are to be introduced that will ensure that courts are focused on trials, rather than administrative actions like postponements. The outcome of these changes will be a reduction of case cycle time and the number of hearings per case.

Arrests that are made too early in the case cycle are a major contributor to postponements of court cases. Changes would need to be made to cater for the need of investigators to arrest accused persons in less serious cases only to ensure their future court attendance at commencement of the trial and the need of prosecutors to take only substantive cases to court.

A major change proposed would be the screening of cases to ensure that only prima facie cases and trial-ready cases are certified and introduced into court.

Changes would also need to take place at the point of investigation. This will include improved and timeous investigation of all crime-scenes. It will be necessary to substantially increase the number of crime scene experts and forensic experts in the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the department of health, and equip them better.

The overhaul would also include substantially increasing the number of detectives as a percentage of SAPS personnel, and to better train them. The department said that the present formula used to calculate the percentage of SAPS members which comprise the detective services "is patently inadequate".

Possibilities are being investigated to at least double the number of detectives from 15% to 33% of SAPS members before December 2009. Two-thirds of the new annual intake would be allocated to detectives.

Once the number of detectives has been increased and trained, a major challenge will be to retain them within the SAPS. Ways to achieve this could include the introduction of salary incentives to attract and retain a new breed of skilled detectives by, for example, providing for a new, specialised career-path for detectives and a special, attractive, monthly detective allowance. There could also be accelerated training programmes, decreasing substantially the time spent in basic training especially by graduated recruits and other persons with relevant prior experience.

Another area of improvement would need to be in the prosecuting capacity of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), including steps to retain skilled and experienced prosecutors.

Efficiency in the courts can be enhanced by improving the work environment for judicial officers, and training them in case flow management, diversion, alternative sentencing and restorative justice approaches. For their part, the department of correctional services could help by improving the "availability management" of detainees who have to appear in court.

A significant effort is already underway to modernise court systems. The e-Scheduler System, for example, is a new electronic court management system covering every court, to which prosecutors, judicial officers, detectives and court personnel, who administer the court process, will have access.

The obsolete manual court recording system is being replaced with an advanced digital recording system. Video postponement of cases is being rolled out with the provision of high quality multi-protocol communication links between court rooms and correctional services facilities. Inmate tracking via an automated system involving positive biometric verification is receiving attention and will ensure effective tracking and location of inmates.

In parallel, a number of initiatives have been identified and some of these are being tested in pilot sites or are awaiting infrastructure before they can be fully implemented. A new automated electronic system of capturing dockets is being tested at pilot sites. Finger print live scan devices that will bring about major throughput and data accuracy enhancements are awaiting implementation.

The SAPS Criminal Record Centre and Forensic Services Laboratories are enhancing their existing capacities and business plans will provide them with new capacities, like firearm "fingerprinting" and immediate access (at arrest), to all role players, of an arrested person's criminal record.

Reducing crime

These and other changes are critical if crime is going to be tackled. Government's crime reduction project continues to aim for a seven to ten percent annual target for the reduction of crime statistics. The 6.4% average reduction achieved during the last financial year, while it still fell short of government's annual target, was an improvement on previous years.

The SAPS Annual Report for 2007/08 shows, yet again, that most cases of serious and violent crime happen to people who know one other, in circumstances where both victim and perpetrator are mostly found. The perpetrators are usually related to the victims or are family friends or acquaintances.

The report further shows that, within the context of those social crimes, there were over 17,000 murders and attempted murder cases during that period. There were the same amount of rape and attempted rape cases. There were 137,000 cases of serious and violent assault and common assault. More than 1.2 million people were arrested for priority and other crimes.

At cabinet's July lekgotla the question of young people and violence was raised. Nqakula said the matter had become topical in recent times because of some of the violent attacks young people mount against other youth, teachers and some members of society.

By the end of May there were around 3,500 children in detention at various centres in the country. The figure includes children who are awaiting trial at the places of safety run by the Department of Social Development and at Correctional Services facilities. Children already sentenced at correctional facilities are 889.

The top six crimes committed by children are murder, rape, serious and violent assault, robbery aggravated, house breaking and theft. There are 80 children who are serving sentences for murder. Five of them are girls. The lekgotla therefore decided that government would put more resources into the Moral Regeneration Campaign to deal with social crime and children in conflict with the law. There will be an aggressive campaign to mobilise society, especially parents, to take responsibility for the upbringing of children to instil in them clean moral scruples.

More Information:

• Criminal Justice System Review

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