South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is facing a major public safety crisis threatening its constitutional democracy. Personal violent crime (murder, rape and robbery) remains among the highest in the world; conuption in the public service is rife; public protests about poor service delivery are frequent (Powell, O'Donovan, and De Visser 2015), widespread, and often tum violent; xenophobic attacks occur frequently (South African History Online 2015); and industrial strike action has also resulted in violence. Devastating natural disasters have, fortunately, been infrequent. The state institutions concerned with public safety and corruption are located mainly at the national level, but perform poorly to meet these diverse challenges. Moreover, the national government's response to crime has focused almost exclusively on law enforcement, neglecting primary, secondary and tertiary crime prevention of a socio-economic nature. The South African Police Service (SAPS), despite its size (nearly 194,000) (SAPS 2015, 309), has been demoralized by corruption from the top to the bottom, it has been politicized, and its public order policing is ill-equipped and inadequately trained to deal with frequent public disturbances. The National Prosecuting Autholity (NPA), too, has been politicized, and its success rate is declining (Redpath 2012). The national court system has run up huge backlogs in trying cases and the national Department of Correctional Services does little more than warehousing a large and growing prison population of some 42,000 people awaiting trial. Sentenced prisoners seldom receive the necessary services to reduce the risk of re-offending after release.