Monday’s cartoon in the Daily Maverick by South Africa’s top cartoonist Zapiro was simple but effective. It was about the Kempton Park murders. The bodies of the nine victims were laid out and next to each was her name, age and what she had been doing when she was murdered: “She went for a jog; She went to work; She went on a date” and so on.
The caption said it all: “Women Doing Normal Things, In an Abnormal Society.”
The Kempton Park murder victims, all women in their 20s and 30s, were found between mid-July and mid-September. As the body count rose, so did the public outcry, with protest marches, petitions and vigils.
But here’s a chilling thought: nine women murdered in two months is way below South Africa’s average murder rate for women. According to SA Police statistics, between 58 and 60 people are murdered in South Africa every day, of which 15 are women.
Just think about that: It means about 900 women were murdered from mid-July to mid-September.
There was an outcry about the nine Kempton Park women – quite rightly – but what about the other 891 women who were murdered during the same period? Did their deaths make headlines? Was there a public outcry? It’s safe to say no.
So why was Kempton Park different? Is it because the nine murdered women were found in a relatively small area – Kempton Park’s only about 17km by 10km – over a relatively short time? Is it because it is mostly a middleclass suburb?
Whatever the answer, these nine murders have certainly focused the minds of South Africans on femicide in a way that statistics seem unable to do.
It’s hard to say whether anything will come from this public outcry, but if it does, I sincerely hope there will be a focus on what criminologists say must happen to bring down violent crime.
They say it’s no good simply to throw force at the problem. We need strategic interventions in the police force.
It’s well known that the problems that feed crime include issues the police can do nothing about, like poverty and high unemployment. But an article by criminologist Guy Lamb gives me hope. He says most violent crime happens in just a few hotspots, so police resources should be focused on the 100 worst areas where cops are currently overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases.
Once enough well qualified police are deployed to these 100 hotspots, they must take action in six critical ways: jack up local crime intelligence gathering; reduce the number of illegal guns; crack down on illegal alcohol outlets; improve preparing court dockets to ensure more convictions; boost community police forums; and provide rehabilitation services for offenders to break the “repeat offender” cycle.
Sounds really sensible.
South Africa is unlikely to solve problems like poverty and unemployment any time soon, so targeting murder hotspots with more and better resourced police officers, really makes sense.
And it must be made easier and safer for people with information about criminals to come forward.
As Agatha Christie said: “Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.”
