South Africans are killing each other at a scary rate

Associated Press:

Watch your back in South Africa. They kill folks here. Murder them at a bewildering rate.

Robbers kill their victims, bystanders kill criminals, family members kill each other.

Gunbattles erupt on streets and in shopping malls. Passers-by whip out pistols and join in firefights between criminals and police or security guards. A recent flurry in high profile bloodshed even has police suggesting they are losing the fight with violent crime.

Plans for South Africa to host soccer’s next World Cup, in 2010, has focused international attention on the crime rate, with organizers having to answer questions not just about whether they’ll have enough stadiums and hotel rooms, but whether the 350,000 foreign visitors expected for the monthlong tournament will be safe.

Statistically a South African is 12 times as likely to be murdered than the average American and his chances of being killed are 50 times greater than if he lived in western Europe.

“This is an extraordinarily violent society and nobody understands it,” said Peter Gastrow, a crime analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Cape Town.

There are plenty of theories, many tied to South Africa’s unique history and the belief that the struggle against apartheid created a culture of lawlessness, Gastrow said.

“The reasons seem to be unbelievably complex. There is no explanation that makes sense. The million dollar question is, ’Why?’ If we could understand that we could start to fix it. But we can’t. All we can do now is ask religious people to pray for us,” he said.

The government contends it has made progress, reducing some types of crime and leveling off others. Still, after recent highly publicized cases, including the deaths of 17 people in just two incidents in June and July, the government had to promise a much tougher stance, saying police will be much more aggressive.

At the same time, the government tries to reduce attention paid to crime by having police release crime statistics only once a year.

The last statistics available showed that between April 2004 and March 2005, 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa, an average of 51 a day in a nation of 47 million. There were 24,516 attempted murders, 55,114 reported rapes and 249,369 assaults with grievous injury.

The government has not released newer figures, but contends there have been slight improvements.

Gastrow said studies show the levels of anxiety about crime are higher now than they were in the 1990s when violent crime was at its peak. People don’t trust the government figures, and there is an accumulation of fear from years of horrendous crime, he said.

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