Mbeki on the Links Between Crime and Racism
Thabo Mbeki recently wrote in ANC Today about the links between the role that crime plays in the country’s psyche and the still percolating racism that simmers beneath the surface of the ociety. The country’s whites too often ignore the connection. Money excerpt:
“For this section of our population … every reported incident of crime communicates the frightening and expected message that the kaffirs are coming. Entrenched racism dictated that “justification must be found for the persisting white fears of ‘die swart gevaar’. All incidents of crime, preferably broadcast as loudly as possible, provide such justification.”**
There is some merit to Mbeki’s remarks. There is a large segment of the white population that is almost gleeful about crime and that will use it as an excuse for lambasting the ANC. Crime is a function of poverty and lawlessness, and poverty and lawlessness were defining characteristics of the apartheid state.
That said, Mbeki needs to be wary of the demagogic tendency to close off all criticism by tossing off accusations of racism against those critics. It is a fine line and is not an easy one to tread but for the sake of the South African political climate, this is an arrow that needs to remain in his quiver most of the time. It will be most lethal if used least frequently.
**Swaart gevaar is an Afrikaans phrase meaning “black danger” or “black peril” and that refers to the age-old white fear of the black masses. And kaffir is the ultimate South African racial epithet, the country’s toxic ”N Word.”
April 28th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Until Mbeki outlaws all guns except hunting rifles the killing will go on.
Gun crime threatens the tourist trade as well as making averge south africans feel hostage in thier homes. He needs to stand up and be a man. Take charge or your people will keep dying needlessly. Mbeki is to SA what Bush is to the U.S..
Blood on both of thier hands.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Paul –
Thanks for weighing in.
Certainly the pervasive gun culture in South Africa is problematic, and ready access to weapons fuels not only violence, but the sort of violence that is almost guaranteed to end in deaths. At the same time, I’m not quite certain how, precisely, prohibition would work. You say “all but hunting rifles,” but were I black in South Africa I’d be asking why we are privileging the sort of weapon that is most likely to be owned by white farmers? And what of those guns already on the streets — the thousands, hundreds of thousands, of weapons already out there? How does prohibition help deal with that? Sure, possessing them might become criminal, but someone inclined to commit a greater crime than illegal gun ownership is the last person who is going to be concerned about the lesser of the charges.
The assertion that Mbeki is to SA what Bush is to the US is just a silly argument, sorry to say. What is the possible parallel other, apparently, than that you do not like either of them? Blood on Mbeki’s hands? Really? Is it not possible to have a discussion about someone’ whose politics we disagree with without speciously calling him a murderer? There is no sensible parallel between Bush (of whom I am absolutely no fan, as readers of my other blog would attest) and Mbeki. Period.
dc
June 11th, 2007 at 7:36 am
The Gun issue:
Making regulated and controlled guns harder to aquire does not solve the gun issue as 99.999% of gun related crimes are done with illiegal weapons.
Basically all that does is disarm the victim, destroying guns in SA also only helps a very little as we have an entire continent full of weapons left over from some war or another that cross our borders.
The “White racist/swart gevaar” issue.
He is just side lining the issue of crime using the same old race card he uses whenever he has nothing intelligent to say on a subject.
He even indirectly prooves this by trying to turn the whole issue into a preception of “scared whites”.
So contradictory.
“The president again made clear that the demon of racism remained a daily feature of South African life that needed to be “confronted openly and on a sustained basis” to achieve a non-racial society.”
Fight racism with racism?
July 30th, 2007 at 5:25 am
The criminal element do not concern themselves with gun prohibition, it is only the law abiding that become the victims. Are the police actually concerned with this problem but then are the police actually concerned with anything ?.
I very much doubt if there is any sector of the community that actually welcomes crime as an excuse to complain. The government is perceived as being indifferent to crime against both black and white communities.
Crime is a function of ignorance, poverty and lawlessness, and these are the defining characteristics of the ANC state which seems to deliberately nuture a state of affairs between races to create discord.
Of course the whites are scared but then so are other race groups.
Blacks commit the majority of crime, therefore blacks become associated with crime, perceived as dangerous or having criminal intent.
Comments like “If they (the whites) do not like it (crime) they should leave” are extremely unhelpful.
Of course there is a link between racism and crime, the blacks perceive that the whites are by definition “advantaged”and “they are all rich” “they deserve it”, “I will not get caught”. The thought that the white person has worked for what he owns does not come into it. It’s “to see is to want” and the logic goes no further.
Until the ANC drops this blame seeking approach, adopts a policy of equal rights and equal responsibilities and realises that the whites are a real asset the country will deteriorate and follow the path of all the other numerous failures of Africa.
July 30th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
D Jones –
I am going to reply to each of your points directly because I think you merge seemingly rational thinking with some rather invasive and obnoxious falsehoods. I’ll place your words in quotation marks and will precede mine with ***:
“The criminal element do not concern themselves with gun prohibition, it is only the law abiding that become the victims. Are the police actually concerned with this problem but then are the police actually concerned with anything ?”
*** The first sentence seems like one of those bumper sticker slogans you read in the United States: If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. But public policy does not proceed in the simplistic manner of bumper stickers. I do believe that the police are concerned with the issue. If there is a problem it is that the police are underfunded and understaffed. I have heard no reasonable person assert that the solution would be fewer police officers.
“I very much doubt if there is any sector of the community that actually welcomes crime as an excuse to complain. The government is perceived as being indifferent to crime against both black and white communities.”
*** There are plenty of sectors, however, that will capitalize on the problem of crime to their own political and ideological advantage. I agree that the government is perceived as being indifferent to crime. I’m not certain if that makes it true, but it is a problem for the government.
“Crime is a function of ignorance, poverty and lawlessness, and these are the defining characteristics of the ANC state which seems to deliberately nuture a state of affairs between races to create discord.”
*** This last assertion is simply nonsense. Some White South Africans have such a sense of being beleaguered that it baffles the imagination. The idea that the ANC state, meanwhile, is defined by “ignorance, poverty, and lawlessness” is wishful thinking by white detractors who picture an elysian era that never existed. the apartheid state fomented the poverty, the lawlessness, the ignorance that whites who benefited from apartheid now decry. How convenient. And how morally and intellectually vacuous.
“Of course the whites are scared but then so are other race groups.”
*** Yes, but rarely do “other race groups” draw the inane assertions about the ANC in toto that its white detractors do.
“Blacks commit the majority of crime, therefore blacks become associated with crime, perceived as dangerous or having criminal intent.”
*** Your point being?
“Comments like “If they (the whites) do not like it (crime) they should leave” are extremely unhelpful.”
*** Yes, they are. And who has made that point here? How about not fighting Straw men?
“Of course there is a link between racism and crime, the blacks perceive that the whites are by definition “advantaged”and “they are all rich” “they deserve it”, “I will not get caught”. The thought that the white person has worked for what he owns does not come into it. It’s “to see is to want” and the logic goes no further.”
*** So what you are arguing, if I can read between your scare quotes, is that crime is a function of racism — of black racism! Forget the white racism that created the conditions you alluded to earlier. And forget that just moments ago you tried to enlist the support of black South Africans by mentioning that they are victims of crime and thus worried about it as well. It’s really black racism (!?) that is the problem.
“Until the ANC drops this blame seeking approach, adopts a policy of equal rights and equal responsibilities and realises that the whites are a real asset the country will deteriorate and follow the path of all the other numerous failures of Africa.”
*** Check out this series of absurd assertions: Ina post geared toward doing nothing but casting blame, the author wishes to avoid a “blame seeking approach.” Without showing that the country does not have a policy of equal rights (other, I assume than the most equal-rights oriented constitution on the planet?) he asserts that whites are somehow beleaguered, which is so wrongheadedly and blindly stupid that it is hard to know where to begin. And of course no one has asserted that whites cannot be an asset to South Africa, though the idea that all whites are is simply wrong.
How about you stop speaking in generalities and stereotypes and stop resorting to the oh-too-common woe-is-me approach to bitching about South Africa? By most any measure the country is a far better, more egalitarian, and successful one than any that preceded it. In some ways, this white pessimism merely reveals the racial resentment from the once-privileged (by force) minority and tells us almost nothing about the realities of contemporary South Africa.
Derek Catsam
July 31st, 2007 at 4:00 am
Derek
Thank you for your response.
Please go back and actually read what I have written before you go overboard with your moral indignation and assumptions and then respond.
July 31st, 2007 at 10:48 am
DJones –
Please go read what you actually read?!? I excerpted and responded to every single sentence. If you have an actual substantive problem with one of my responses, by all means address it, but given the way that I responded sentence-by-sentence, it’s a bit hard to accept as anything but grasping at straws your argument that I somehow did not read what you wrote.
Derek