Crime: look away, look away
The South African crime situation report recently released by the police contains the following gem:
Almost three quarters (72,7%) of all aggravated robberies are street/public robberies. These occur mainly in CBD areas and the black megatownships … where ordinary people are robbed of their money or other valuables at gun or knifepoint. By far the majority of these incidents are therefore not high-profile cases involving well-known people and are rarely reported in the media. …
The carjackings and house robberies most frequently occur in the more affluent suburbs… Carjacking and robbery at residential premises, which account for just more than one out of five aggravated robberies, increased by 6,0% and 25,4% respectively. … Because the crimes frequently occur in more well-to-do areas, the chances of somebody well-known being targeted and even killed are much higher. Such incidents feature on the front pages and in the headlines of the media and reverberate around the world. Such focused and selective reporting on less than 5,0% of South Africa’s contact crime, read together with the contact crime statistics, consequently creates an international image of South Africa as an extremely violent society.
Carjacking and robbery at residential premises account for 20.8% of aggravated robberies, which increased by 4.6% and in turn account for 15% or so of “contact crime”. So it’s true that they’re not the only crimes that happen. (Surprise!)
It’s also true that many crimes, such as muggings or low-value robberies from poor households or domestic violence are less likely to be reported by the media. Sadly, newspapers have to prioritise, since a complete compendium would put a telephone book on your doorstep in the mornings. Besides, their readers tend to get rather more worked up about being attacked by intruders in their own homes than about street muggings or getting cleaned out in their absence.
This kind of editorialising and a priori criticism of media reporting sends only one message, to my mind: “There’s something here that needs whitewash. Be patriotic and go to it, journalists!”
Think that’s harsh? Well then someone should explain to me why the 4.6% overall increase in aggravated robberies features prominently in the executive summary, but the 118.6% increase in bank robberies, the 52.5% increase in business robberies, the 25.4% increase in residential robberies, and the 21.6% increase in cash-in-transit heists are buried deep in a table in the main report.
Against that small average rise, these out-of-control increases are rather surprising. The category in addition comprises carjacking (up 6.0%), truckjacking (up 7.6%), and “other aggravated robberies not mentioned elsewhere in this list, which are mainly aggravated robberies occurring on the streets and in other public open spaces and are categorised as ‘general aggravated robberies’ in this report” (up by 1%).
There’s your reason they “are rarely reported in the media”. Without arguing that they are trivial to the person experiencing them, they are common (i.e. not news) and not rapidly increasing (i.e. not news). The double- and triple-digit increases in the other categories are rather more newsworthy. So it’s not just because they “are not high-profile cases involving well-known people”.
Another thing that got buried in the main body - and this is good news, if you’d believe it - is that despite the dismal numbers of the last year, the numbers are still down since 2003: murder (-5.2%), rape (-2.4%), indecent assault (-1.5%), attempted murder (34.4%), assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm (-17.9%), common assault (-26.8%), aggravated robbery (-7.3%), common robbery (-27.1%).
There. Having ferreted out the good news, do I get a noddy badge from the government? Maybe a job offer from Snuki Zikalala, the government communicator who says there’s plenty bread in Zimbabwe?
