Crime and energy: State failing SA

If the primary responsibility of governments is to protect their citizens from murderous criminals and lawless bandits, the Mbeki administration is open to criticism for downplaying the threat posed to South Africa by its high levels of crime.

If the second obligation of governments in the age of electricity and the marvels the microchip is to maintain a sufficient and reliable supply of power, President Thabo Mbeki is vulnerable to censure for allowing demand to exceed supply.

He cannot fairly be criticised for ignoring or denying that crime is a destructive force in post-apartheid South Africa. He can, however, be reproached for adding so many riders to his admissions of concern that they almost negate them.

'Mbeki asserted that most South Africans would agree with him'
Thus, while he referred to crime as "a scourge" in his recent address commemorating the 95th anniversary of the founding of the ANC, he later felt the need to qualify it by describing crime as a problem rather than an out-of-control crisis.

In an apparent bid to emphasise his qualifying point, Mbeki asserted that most South Africans would agree with him.

He needs to ask himself why, according to the Human Science Research Council's massive social attitude survey, 75 percent of adult South Africans support the execution of convicted murderers, if it is not because they think these criminals are literally getting away with murder.

While official police crime statistics point to a steady decrease in several categories of serious crime, including murder, it should be noted that the overall levels are still high and that the decreases need to seen in the context of increases in cash-in-transit robberies and rape, as well as a 7 percent increase in the 21 most serious crimes in the 12 years from 1994 to 2006.

In what might be interpreted as a sign that crime is not taken as seriously as it should be, South Africa's programme of action on how to address the deficiencies and weakness in contemporary society does not include crime as one of the problems that needs be tackled urgently.

The reason given for that astounding omission from the programme - which was submitted to the African Peer Review secretariat - is a decision by the programme drafters to restrict it to issues where a "discernible impact" can be made through limited and specifically targeted government interventions.

The African Union was not impressed, judging by the leaked contents of a report that it sent to Mbeki. The AU urged South Africa to take a tough stand against violent crime and radical action to remedy the underlying causes of poverty and unemployment.

Charles Nqakula, the minister of safety and security, has been sharply criticised for failing to take the concerns of opposition members of parliament seriously about the continuing high level of crime.

He is on record as advising three opposition parliamentarians to emigrate to another country if they believe crime makes life in South Africa intolerable. His facetious response contains a corollary: the imputation that they do not talk on behalf of the black majority, an insinuation that was repudiated by black as well as white people the next day.

On the critical shortage of electricity, and the recurring outages that disrupt the economy, inconvenience the citizenry and impede the flow of traffic on already congested and perilous roads, there is a similar inclination by Mbeki's ministers to belittle the distress of those affected or to deflect blame from themselves and/or the government. Instead of maintaining a tactful silence on the complaints of the businessmen about the loss of production and damage to the economy of the latest major outage - the one that cast a literal pall of gloom over large areas of Johannesburg and Cape Town - Trevor Manuel, the minister of finance, dismissed their estimates of the costs as "overcooked and utter garbage".

As Eskom is a state-owned and, ultimately, state-controlled utility, the suspicion exists that Manuel's outburst was a defencive response, an attempt to minimise the damage to the government he serves by minimising the cost of the outage to the economy.

Manuel, who has been highly praised for his skillful management of the government's macro-economic policy, is normally a man who chooses his words carefully and presents his case skilfully. His colloquial outburst is not unprecedented, however.

He delivered a similar outburst during a budget debate in 2004, when he accused opposition parliamentarians of "speaking voodoo" for daring to press the government to make anti-retroviral drugs available at state health institutions for the treatment of HIV/Aids.

As it turned out, the government eventually agreed that there were sound medical reasons to prescribe anti-retroviral drugs as an integral part of its comprehensive treatment plan for the dreaded pestilence.

To return to the recurring outages that increasingly characterise South Africa: like Nelson Mandela, Alec Erwin, the minister of public enterprises, is another minister who is generally respected for his cool-headedness and rationality.

But late in February last year, as Cape Town's residents seethed because of a series of power cuts and as the national local government elections approached, Erwin further inflamed anger in many households that had reverted to primus stoves to boil water for tea or coffee.

In what seemed to be a deliberate intervention to deflect public anger away from the ANC government and the ANC-controlled city council for failing to ensure the supply of power to the city, he raised the spectre of sabotage.

He publicly postulated that a loose bolt that had brought a unit of the Koeberg nuclear power station to a standstill had not been caused by incompetent maintenance of the unit but, instead, by a deliberate act of sabotage.

Erwin's statement did not save the ANC from defeat in its battle against the Democratic Alliance for the control of Cape Town, however.

Later, in August last year, when police investigations failed to establish that saboteurs had been at work, Erwin took another tack. He strongly denied that he had mentioned the word "sabotage", although, he said, at the time there was a "serious possibility" that it had been the work of a saboteur or saboteurs.

Unfortunately for Erwin, he was recorded by e.tv news as saying: "This is in fact not an accident… Any interference with any electricity installation is an exceptionally serious crime. It is sabotage."

He referred in the same statement to pending legal action and the laying of a charge. Neither occurred.

The saga is not over yet. The full cost of folly and incompetence has still to be paid. South Africa's reserve supply of power is well below the international standard of between 10 percent and 15 percent. A winter of discontent looms ominously.
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