Impunity

Impunity

This is the structure, the new warp and weft of our community as we flex our new society and its freedom to kill, maim, stone, rape and rob.

Notwithstanding a great deal of blathering to the contrary the latest crime statistics confirm what many have been saying: crime is not really “under control”; and the question arises, “can ‘crime’ come under control?”  The Blogospherian’s short answer is no, can it be maintained? Perhaps.

Top of the log is the murder rate. Ten years ago it was around 26,000 people a year. It has been declining for some years and the low point came about two back, maybe when the rate dropped to about 40 per 100,000 citizens. [As is frequently observed there are lies, damm lies and statistics] In most of Europe and places like Japan it is below 3/100,000. 

Still when it was about 52/100,000, 40 seemed almost chilled and satisfactory. And as I’ve frequently observed I hear far less gunfire around my multi-cultural neighbourhood on the Alex border, than I recorded ten years ago[ itself already less than the highpoint in 1992] Now it seems to be on the rise again, and the question must arise … Why? 

I’m sure there are a great many reasons why people would like to kill. For many people murder is a most satisfactory affair, I’m sure. I am certain that the reason why we have [as a species] always abhorred murder is simply because it is such a satisfactory affair. I would go so far as to suggest that the most important reason why people seldom resort to murder is because of the fear of being caught and going to jail, a place where bad things can happen to one. [As my regular readers will know I do not support the use of the death penalty on the grounds that we must never again give governments the power to murder its citizens, even clandestinely, and the death penalty is the chink in the armour that permits this to occur. I also seem to remember that in the year that the old pre-’94 gov’t was condemned by the UN for using the death penalty wantonly we had approximately 15,000 murders and some 350 odd convicted murderers paid the ultimate price. This did not seem to me to be much of a deterrent given that the average murder probably involves at least two murderers. I do feel though that people who commit murder should have the right to terminate their own lives. I have decided that I shall promote this idea, which I have decided to call the Socratic Solution. See my forthcoming “testimonies of an enumerator”.] 

Perhaps this could be the core of our difficulty. Rightly or wrongly the general public, especially that part prone to violent solutions to issues, is under the impression that the probability of being apprehended and convicted for any major crime is relatively low. One hears stories of a ten percent apprehension rate and even lower conviction rate. Perhaps the statistics are better than that, although I haven’t come across any overt bragging. 

One would want a ninety plus percent apprehension rate with a better than eighty percent conviction rate to feel that the situation was really stable, in my view. Even then we would feel there was too much... One murder is too much.

I would also agree with those advocates of the authority structure who feel the notion of “out of control” is somewhat hysterical… 1992 was “out of control”.

Another thing that bothers me though, especially in light of these alleged low conviction rates is the argument that a significant number of murders involve parties known in some ways to the deceased.  While random murder is disturbingly high for a modern State such as ours, it is the idea that the overwhelming majority of murders are apparently “in-house” that seems saddest. 

I do find it hard to reconcile a low conviction rate with this idea of murder by “known” associates. However having no detailed information on either position I shall let the apparent incongruence float on the blogosphere in search of data. For the moment I shall accept both propositions as having reasonable validity.

So what we have to ask is why? Why do an allegedly higher proportion of wives, husbands, lovers, children, parents, grandparents, neighbours, colleagues or business associates engage in murdering their “known associates” here than they do in, apparently, most other places? Surely the stresses and pressures of modern life are not significantly different in our place to those of other places around the planet, are they? 

The core of criminal behaviour seems to be the sense of licence that occurs when faced with an aura of impunity.  Impunity relates to the idea that one is somehow exempt from accountability for action.

How else does one account for a young woman who has beauty, brains and chutzpah opting to hire a gang of men to kill a baby. Did it never occur to her that it was wrong? Or did she simply assume that she would never be caught? [For offshore readers this refers to a recent trial in Cape Town of a young and beautiful woman who murdered her former lover’s baby, for complex personal reasons, by hiring a gang of hit men.]

This single act of murder by infanticide highlights in bas-relief the dilemma we face at this time in ourstory. [Yes it’s Ourstory not history or herstory or anystory but ourstory… and ourstory is increasingly bloodstained for a place allegedly at peace.]

The young woman will spend at least six months in prison with time off for good behaviour and time already served. Theoretically she should be there for a few lifetimes; but in a country where the murder rate seems to be back on a rising curve again; and HIV related deaths are bringing down the overall life expectancy rate. It is now theoretically possible that [some of] my generation of baby-boomers could outlive the current millennial generation. What this
means is that a lifetime is no longer all that long. And then there’s the “Yengeni effect” [or if you’re reading this from a smug offshore venue: “the Libby Effect” or even, more absurdly perhaps, the “Hilton effect”]. In other words:-  Even if you do get caught you will “get away with it”.

In another of the murder tales that punctuate our daily news fare, a woman allegedly has her husband hunted down on the highway, and burned to death in the boot of his car. Another woman allegedly has her singer/composer husband butchered by assistants, and the latest news is that she may have actually pulled the trigger when the bullet entered the back of his head “execution style”, as the press put it at the time.

This week a gang of angry citizens stoned a politician to death in a neighbouring province. How is it possible that people can simply go and stone a man to death over his political activity: or was it inactivity?

Now notwithstanding one’s personal feelings about the desired fate of politicians, that is IMPUNITY with capitals. [Incidentally this was the second ruling party political murder in a week, a deputy mayor in a rural part of the country was gunned down as she was bringing in the groceries from her car to her house, gunned down by people who simply ran away and stole nothing. These two murders are part of a disturbing sub-pattern of political murders over the past few years. Not forgetting also that no one has yet been apprehended [apparently] for the murder of a prominent human rights activist in south west Ekhuruleni recently…and a controversial newspaper columnist was attacked and shot in his home plus... plus. ?  ]

These few examples highlight an ignored issue that refuses to go away… ie: the crisis in service delivery at every level of our society. This is a bland phrase. It
means that too few people do their jobs with any level of enthusiasm. Too many people seem to work only when an extra reward is given for doing what should be their jobs. Too many people associate a job with the pay and not with the work. Is it possible that if it weren’t for the money that no one would work? [foolish question *&^%#36]

 Perhaps “no one” is too strong. Perhaps "most" people would prefer to sit around: except that they need a source of cash flow to pay for cool things and necessaries.

Does democracy mean, “Not having to do anything you don’t want to” or is it a question of “How far back must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustice?” The latest apology for bad behaviour trots out the good old poverty and hard times argument. I dispute this. The world is awash with poverty, there are at least ninety countries lower down the poverty scale than here and they don’t all have murder rates in excess of 40/100,000, or we’d have been informed of this by the various apologists. There are also places that are wall to wall with firearms and they don't have murder rates as high as our!

Either way the outcome is that too many people are resorting to murder to deal with their interpersonal issues. There is nothing new in this: some of our earliest records as a species contain references to murder as a
means of solving one’s problems.

Most commonly these were what we call “hot-blooded” acts. Some of the evidence being led in a series of high level murder trials over the past few years indicate that we have far too many hot blooded acts being carried out in cold blood…one thinks here of the mass wave of security worker murders last year… more than 60, mostly unsolved crimes, I believe. And then there was the horror case of the heist gang who burned the security guards to death in the vehicle after robbing them. They were caught and are serving a brief sentence in hell.

This does raise the point that murders are being solved and the baddies are getting their day in court.

We the readers in society are fed on a routine diet of court proceedings in a never-ending stream of fascinating murder trials. We are informed that the Policing services are receiving loads of high-tech equipment and super- advanced training, although opposition parties dispute these claims, apparently. However the latest crime figures reveal that no amount of spin can ignore the single fact that crime is not “under control”, and that the rising sense of rage in the community at large is tangible: as revealed in the recent national strike and the stoning to death of a minor politician.

Rage, despair and impunity.

Despair: - the idea that the ordinary citizen can get nowhere with authority; or with “the system”.  In my street for instance a group of concerned residents recently organised a petition against the presence of a noisy, disruptive, disreputable informal drinking house about four houses away from the local Lyndhurst Primary school, at the bottom of the road.

It had been there for years but it suddenly gained a sign and some form of intervening status allowing it to acquire liquor more legitimately. almost everyone  signed the petition, meaning that more than a hundred people objected to the presence of this unpleasant place in our street. Yet months later the SA Breweries trucks are still delivering their loads of beer. The petition was spiked [perhaps] in the twenty or more formal channels to which it was delivered, and the petition organiser has quietly sold up [one hears] and is about to move off to some less alarming place. There are certainly no indications of action. The children and other pedestrians still have to routinely run the gauntlet of abusive behaviour from drunks at all and any time.

All over the country each day news reports are broadcast relating to community rage over poor service delivery…failure to act upon citizen complaints is part of poor service delivery. Equally I routinely hear a litany of government apologists arguing that people should be using “Channels” to communicate their grievances. Aah how deep runs the blood of the slaver, how it has permeated the responses of those who were once slaves.

A man was stoned to death this week. Was it for poor service delivery? Was it because the “Channels” are blocked? When the system doesn’t work, or is perceived to be unfairly biased, despair and rage are inevitable outcomes. Murder almost by ordainment... maybe... do people believe they can act with impunity it seems so.

Is it possible that the flip side of poor service delivery is impunity? The system is so dysfunctional that those who choose can getaway with anything, or so they believe?  Is public rage so great that it more and more frequently overwhelms rationality. These seem to be the responses of a rising tide of informal opinion.

In his response to my blog on the skills shortage/urban myth debate, Rory suggested that our problem [as a society] was that we are attempting to put a system originally designed to cope with the wants and needs of a small minority [about five million citizens] at the service of nearly fifty million without having changed the basic specifications. So we had ninety thousand cops in the bad old days now we have double that [or we will have “soon” we’re told]

In fact we probably need ten times more cops to deal with a nation of people who are free to rape, pillage and murder as the fruits of freedom. We probably need a civil service at least twice the size that it is now too, except that we can’t afford it and anyway we should privatise the whole thing [that is another theme and I wont go into it  here; see my forthcoming blog serial  fiction The testimonies of an enumerator.]

Certainly there was seldom quite such an enduring epidemic of close quarter murder as we are witness to here.

 On the other hand maybe things are worse in

Nigeria?  I am sure i once wrote a blog on murder in Nigeria... i shall have to go and find it.

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The Blogospherian.