WC2010 BYO (Bring Your Own) cops

Hmm. So "80% of all murder cases are domestic related." Really? Of the 21,553 murders in South Africa, 17 240 murders supposedly just involved 47 family members i.e. moms, pops, kids, nanas, grampas and uncle Bobs whacking each other off EVERY SINGLE DAY of the year. Riiight..

I can just see the Poms and Euro fans lapping this shite up. Let's put it into numbers taking the assistant commissioner's words. He says the balance of murders (20%) comes from the "other categories" not involving family squabbles. And they are no minor categories mind you. Among them are 548 847 assaults, 393 959 burglaries, 93 133 car thefts which include 14 000 car hijackings, 52 425 rapes (reported) and 228 442 robberies. See how stupid his statement looks when you put some figures to it? Not very likely then that what he is saying is true, is it? But he doesn't think people will take the trouble to do the maths.

And just so you have a comparison of how out of kilter SA's murder rate is, Australia with 21,5 million people roughly half the population of South Africa had 282 murders in 2007 or 1,3% of SA's total. Think about the number.

But the dude says everything is fine sports fans. Unless you are caught up in one of these "domestic-related" squabbles and not the other hundreds of thousands of crimes, chances are nothing will happen to you. In fact, and this is where it gets really smart... if you are caught up in NO crime, nothing will happen to you. See the reasoning...? Clever man, the assistant.

Come on down then. Our coppers have everything under control and just to show you how much we have it "under control" we'd like you to send us some of your coppers to, um, er, y'know "assist us" just in case what we are saying isn't completely true. That's right, if you happen to be harmed and one of your coppers is guarding you, you can't very well blame the South African cops now can you? Tsk. And who will carry the can should one of these nice foreign cops meet an unfortunate end after an altercation with one of SA's notorious "wild" life? Bring on the circus.

South African police assistant commissioner Ben Groenewald is confident the 2010 World Cup will not be ravaged by crime.

Speaking at a football conference organised by the Crown Prosecution Service, Groenewald said it was a fallacy to suggest his country was too dangerous to visit.

"Johannesburg is said to be the murder capital of the world but that is not the case," he said. "80% of all murder cases are domestic related."

He admitted, however, that muggings and robberies were still a major challenge a year before the World Cup.

"In terms of our crime statistics we are looking at crimes such as house robbery, business robberies and car jackings. We are putting all our efforts into combating these."

With thousands of extra police being drafted in for the finals, Groenewald said street robberies would be monitored like never before.

"Whenever there has been a major sporting event in our country, crimes against individuals goes rapidly down. No one is saying crime doesn't happen but we will deploy an additional 32,000 officers and do our utmost to prevent as much of it as possible.

"There will be areas we would not like people to go to but we will be distributing information at all entry points indicating this."

As part of the overall crime prevention, Groenewald revealed that all participating countries will be invited to send their own law enforcement officers to help prevent hooliganism. CPS prosecutors successfully infiltrated the 2006 World Cup in Germany, collaborating with the German authorities and leading to quickfire justice for scores of English hooligans.

Groenewald said he was keen for similar action to be taken in south Africa.

"We are asking each country to send up to 15 of their own policemen. We believe that when visitors see their own policemen they tend to behave better. We were not originally thinking of doing this but it is almost certain we will now utilise foreign policemen."