Give us the latest crime satistics!

Sometimes it's difficult to tell what's more irritating - the way South African dinner table conversations gravitate towards crime or the types who sneer at the way they do.

Perhaps we talk so much about crime for the same reason the British talk about the rain all the time - because there is so much of it.

Of course, there are major differences. But the biggest difference is in its function. British weather talk seems to be a conversation opener. South African crime talk is, unfortunately, necessary on a different level: survival.

Even if government shared crime figures regularly with the people of South Africa, we would still need to tell our crime stories to one another to fill the cold statistics with real content, helping us to better gauge our level of vigilance.

As it is, government has decided that South Africans are better off digesting the crime levels through a garnished annual release, matured for six months after the year in review. Former president Thabo Mbeki, who instituted the "moratorium", argued that public access to the latest raw figures was driving an hysterical and no-doubt racist fear.

His successors have since tried to argue that the main reason is to prevent criminals from using crime statistics to strategise. These reasons are such an insult to South Africans' intelligence that they actually help fan the hysteria.

So, with even more urgency, we seek out news of the latest local trends. It is not to be found in the media, which has never developed any consistent way of reporting on crime, apart from using the most horrific stories as a stopgap on slow news days.

Thus, we are left with the word-of-mouth story, which, with all its embroidery and infuriating South African biases, is still better than nothing. Therefore, just like other South Africans, when the owners of retail outlets get together, the conversation almost always turns to crime. But even the most jaded South African listening to local shopkeepers talk about crime can't help but be surprised by two things.

The first is how every single owner-manager of a corner café in South Africa has, at one stage or another, had a gun stuck in his or her face. Being a local grocer, that most gentle of occupations, has somehow thrust them into the frontlines of an undeclared war.

The second is the business-like way they discuss their latest experiences, stories, trends, methods, and counter-measures. They even swap advice on handling the fall-out, which often includes a collapse of staff morale and panic attacks that swoop down weeks after an incident.

What would they make of the latest annual crime figures served up by government?

They show an increase of 4.4% in robberies at businesses, compared to the previous year, and an increase of 295%, compared to 2004. They'd shrug - what use is a six-months-old weather report in predicting what to expect over the weekend?

By refusing to grant the community unfettered access to crucial survival information, our very own government has excluded itself from the South African crime conversation.

Source : Times Live, 04/10/2010

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