South Africa under siege

"DA calls for urgent debate on the onslaught of crime in SA"

Durban, in my home province of KwaZulu-Natal, was this past weekend witness to the brutal and utterly senseless murder of Naren and Meera Sham, and their 20-year-old son, Kavir, who were gagged, had their hands tied behind their backs, and their throats slit by a band of armed men who had forced themselves into the family's Stamford Hill home.

The fact that Kavir was best friends with my own son, Peter Barnard, makes this tragedy all the more personal to me. But what is even more tragic is the fact that my family and the Shams' many grieving friends and relatives represent only the smallest drop in the ocean of South Africans who have lost their loved ones to the scourge of violent crime.

When Parliament reconvenes on 15 September 2008, I intend to move a motion in the National Assembly calling for an urgent debate on the rapid onslaught of crime in South Africa, and what immediate steps may be taken to stem it. The Democratic Alliance (DA) will seek this debate in light of mounting indications that the ANC government is simply not up to the task of tackling South Africa's debilitating crime epidemic.

These indications range from Justice & Constitutional Development Deputy-Minister, Johnny de Lange's admission earlier this year that "The situation is sometimes so overwhelming that we don't know what to do about crime. We have not necessarily taken the right decisions over the past 15 years or used resources efficiently", to reports on the South African Police Services' (SAPS) recently-released crime statistics for 2007/2008, which show that there has been a massive 14.5% spike in the number of residential robberies throughout the country - an indication that armed robbers are attacking South African homes at a rate of almost 40 per day (1). In addition to this, we have seen a 4.4% increase in the frequency of car hijackings, and a staggering 47.4% increase in the regularity of business robberies.

In August, the DA released a comprehensive crime plan, aimed at addressing the problems within our criminal justice system which have increasingly rendered the government incapable of stemming a crime wave which has grown into a veritable tsunami - one which threatens the lives and livelihoods of all South Africans, but principally, those of our poorest and most vulnerable people.

We proposed putting more police officers on the streets and training more detectives in order to beef up the SAPS' investigative capacity. We called for the reinstatement of SAPS' specialised units, and put forward proposals for the improvement of South Africa's prisons by, amongst others, involving prisoners in productive labour and community upliftment.

We also called for the establishment of a Directorate for Victims of Crime, which would monitor the response of officials to victims of crime, and administer a Victims of Crime Fund, to provide South Africans who have suffered physical, emotional or financial damage as a result of a crime with access to services and assistance.

The time has now come for Parliament, which represents the people of South Africa, to debate this matter vigorously, and compel the government to seek immediate solutions to the country's crime epidemic.

Statement issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on safety and security.