Zukiswa Wanner

Having received a lot of emails pertaining to my Affirmative Action Crooks piece, I always knew that I was going to have to say something else on this subject – no. Not on affirmative action crooks in particular but on crime in general. Last week gave me the perfect opportunity, what with the highly unoriginal – if noble- Million Man March against Crime organized by comedian Desmond Dube. The idea was for as many people as possible to gather in Pretoria, march to the Union Buildings and present a paper to the Presidency on how tired South Africa is with crime.

So on the day in question, Tuesday June 10, the cameras were ready (SABC 2 had planned to show the whole thing live from 11 to 1300hrs), the banners and t-shirts were made, Desmond did many an interview on radio and television but alas, it wasn’t a million, or even a hundred thousand people that turned up for the march but a mere seven thousand five hundred.

Many South Africans, myself inclusive, are gatvol with crime and while there are those who may have supported the march but couldn’t go because they were working, I personally didn’t go because I thought the march a practice in futility. This is yet another situation of South Africans thinking that toyi-toying will make the government act differently on anything (if you thought it could then ask the people in Khutsong who have been toyi-toying for over a year and are yet to be returned to Gauteng Province). What was the purpose of the march really? Send a delegation to the Presidency and a request for more police presence and more jails to be built?

Or may be the march was done so that the criminals could see that we are gatvol. I can see it now…a bank robber taking a moment out when planning  a robbery in his house while watching someone speechifying on television and many more holding placards that read ‘say no to crime’. Conscience strikes and he says to his cronies, ‘No. This is bad. Gents, we shouldn’t do this.’ Yeah right.

Now while I have been known to criticize often without offering a solution, in this case I am actually going to offer a solution. Crime is not just a government problem but largely a community problem. When we have a society that toasts someone who’s just emerged from Sun City with booze while looking disparagingly on someone who has just received their degree because ‘ibhujwa’; when we are a society that buys perfumes, televisions, heaters and clothes via the back door, stuff that we clearly know are proceeds of criminal activity, we cannot cry and ask the government to do something when our turn tobe robbed comes.

But back to the march and my suggested solution to crime. To start with, may be we should stop harbouring criminals and call the necessary hotlines when we know who the criminals are. Additionally. May be those seven thousand people who were in Pretoria and everyone who supports them  should become proactive instead of reactive. Now is the time for them to join (or form) a community policing forum in the communities. I write this a little late but suggest that in future when someone thinks of funding a march, they should in fact divert the funding to the CPFs – in my opinion at least this shows that we would be doing something to protect ourselves.

And to Desmond Dube  and all those who were in Pretoria last week – it was a noble effort, it really was. But sadly I think it’s just me and other non-criminals who listened to your call against crime (well unless two or three politicians were also awake then you could have also captured the attention of two or three criminals).