South Africa, a country many sacrificed their lives for so that many may enjoy a better life, this week sadly earned the title as one of the uppermost crime-ridden countries in the world – placed seventh among the 193 United Nations member states, and at the top of the heap along with countries such as Nigeria and Senegal.
Sadly, the crime that is causing so much damage to the reputation of the country, part of it, which is orchestrated also in high places, is engineered by powerful people within state-based institutions – people who should be protecting and securing the citizens and country’s safety, the report tells us.
A section of the country’s leadership, according to the report, is deeply embedded in networks formed in cahoots and with the help of state agencies.
Limping from all kinds of adversities, including high rates of unemployment, poverty and gender-based violence, among others, now our beloved country – a democratic country with an almost 30-year lifespan after the disasters of apartheid and colonialism – is facing a more potent and dangerous enemy: the scourge of crime.
Intuitively, the people of this country know crime is out of control. Could it be that we are headed into a mafia state, in a democracy?
What we knew through sheer instinct, has now been made concrete through the Global Organised Crime Index 2023 report, a study conducted by the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime – that we lead the pack in terms of orchestrating organised crime.
This is not what we intended to be when we defeated apartheid and embarked on a new path of constitutional democracy. Yet the wheels seem to be coming off.
At the outset of the project of democratising the country, we promised the citizenry a better life where all which is unjust will be a thing of the past, buried with apartheid and its carcasses.
Yet this is where we are today: performing poorly in almost all areas of human endeavour.
The report tells us that our country’s “political system has been accused of being a kleptocracy, damaging the image of the SA police and leading to a significant drop in trust from the public”.
That is damning. The police are cited as complicit in procurement corruption, and so are the departments of education and health. This is serious stuff. The ANC-led government is said to be using its majority to stymie “crucial legislative oversight, protecting its representatives from corruption inquiries”.
Surely, this can’t be Madiba’s ANC; it can’t be Tambo’s ANC; it can’t be Luthuli’s ANC. It certainly cannot be the promised Motherland we were all promised.
Our immediate surroundings tell us that too many people are dying. Women and men are not safe. Poverty is climbing and unemployment is sky-rocketing.
As a publication, we can only urge the government to take this report seriously.
It is not as if its findings are anything new. We experience it daily. The time bomb is ticking. The country is at a crossroad. Indecision is not going to save a country that is approaching a precipice.
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