Crime: Who is to blame?

The archbishop of Johannesburg is a thoughtful man, not given to impetuous statements. So Archbishop Buti Tlhagale’s uncompromising address at the funeral Mass for murdered Fr Allard Mako OMI could be read as an uncharacteristic demonstration of intense outrage at the nature of crime in South Africa today.

Angry though the address is, and rightly so, Archbishop Tlhagale’s points are perfectly rational. When the archbishop censures the government for not doing enough to combat crime, he also criticises those who are tolerant of the government’s irresolute policy.
One is entitled to wonder about the ruling party’s seriousness about fighting crime when it seems so easily persuaded to trade ethics for political benefits and loyalty.

Can we really be surprised at the culture of impunity among criminals when the police commissioner himself is not only compromised by serious allegations against him including friendships with shadowy figures of the underworld but is also described as a political ally of President Thabo Mbeki, whose protection he is said to enjoy?

Is parliament communicating its intolerance for crime when it administers only token punishment to MPs who have defrauded the taxpayer?

What moral fibre is strengthened when one of the two frontrunners to serve South Africa as president after 2009 is facing corruption charges, and was described by a judge of having been in a fundamentally corrupt relationship with a convicted fraudster?

What message did the African National Congress send to criminals when some of its leading members carried convicted fraudster Tony Yengeni shoulder-high to jail, as if his conviction was an instance of heroic martyrdom?

Criminals in the Western Cape will have been buoyant when the police arrested the leader of the opposition and mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille, during a demonstration against crime.

Safety and security minister Charles Nqakula has famously invited the whingers about crime to pack their bags and emigrate. Will he now extend the same invitation to Archbishop Tlhagale?

The archbishop rightly apportions blame for the crime crisis also to those who tolerate the government’s signal failure in addressing it. The people should not accept crime as a way of life, but vigorously communicate to the government that it is failing them.

Archbishop Tlhagale points out that poverty and the apartheid past cannot serve as excuses for crime. These are explanatory factors, but not all poor people and not all those oppressed under apartheid are criminals. Invoking poverty as a justification for crime is an insult to those poor who do not engage in crime. Indeed, it is the law-abiding poor who suffer most from crime. Rationalising crime in such terms discounts a principal dynamic in the crisis: the erosion of morals in South Africa.

Just as the ruling party has an equivocal approach to crime, so do communities where criminals enjoy protection, or are even feted as heroes, and where otherwise law-abiding citizens become complicit in crime when they buy stolen goods.

Archbishop Tlhagale has a particularly harsh view of Catholics who protect and patronise criminals, saying: Their hands are dripping with the blood of innocent people.

Whether or not the archbishop’s suggestion that murderers should be refused burial from Catholic churches and that Communion be withheld from Catholics who make themselves complicit in crime is practicable is a matter for experts in doctrine, canon law and pastoral application.

Archbishop Tlhagale has, however, articulated a frustration experienced by most South Africans. His homily, at the funeral of one who to the authorities will be just another crime statistic, should be disseminated widely especially among those who have the power to fight crime.