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| Africa Subsaharan |
| S.Africa"s Crime Wave - 8 times the world average |
| 2006-07-21 |
| [Some excellent statistics in this media release. This is one mother of a violent country. Jan] The recent killings of four South African policemen and eight gangsters in a Wild West-type shootout in a Johannesburg suburb made international headlines. It was reported on CNN, BBC and in the world"s press. After a five-hour siege at a house, fourteen members of a crime syndicate eventually surrendered to the police. The area was compared to a war zone, and Johannesburg was "under siege" according to some press reports. The drama started after twenty armed gunmen stormed a supermarket in a western suburb. Both criminal syndicates and the storming of supermarkets have become common phenomena in the new South Africa, and the killings revealed how fragile is the line between life and death for policemen in contemporary South Africa. It is now well-known throughout the world that South Africa has become its crime capital. Crime has become a scourge, and a corollary of this rise is the dissolution and dissipation of the South African Police Service. Whatever one said about South Africa"s past, there was a reasonable level of law and order. All that has gone. Baby rapes, hijacking, and cash heists are other new phenomena which only appeared as crime categories after the present government took power. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #7 Affirmative action might work if there any whites left. |
| Posted by: SamAdamsky 2006-07-21 14:59 |
| #6 Ek dink Bush en Die Boer is aanspreeklik! (I think Bush and the Dutch farmers are responsible) |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-07-21 12:53 |
| #5 Anyone who thought anything else was going to happen when the white government was replaced by the ANC must have been on serious drugs. If you don't want to end up seriously racist, it's not a good thing to look too closely at South Africa. |
| Posted by: mac 2006-07-21 11:43 |
| #4 One other major difference to remembered about South Africa and crime statistics : in the not too distant past, crime was mainly under control and the police were efficient. So there is a social memory of that, and the present can logically be compared with the past. In most if not all of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, there has not been a time in most peoples' lives when crime was not high nor the police uncorrupt or inefficient. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2006-07-21 11:29 |
| #3 "#2 I wonder if the difference from other sub-Saharan countries is the level of violence or the quality of data collection and reporting." Both. |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-07-21 10:22 |
| #2 I wonder if the difference from other sub-Saharan countries is the level of violence or the quality of data collection and reporting. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-07-21 10:04 |
| #1 South Africa is killing itself and going the way of Zimbabway |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-07-21 10:01 |