Failure could save South African policing
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South Africa’s recently released crime statistics reveal worrying increases in violent crime for the last quarter of 2020, including for murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and rape. They show that rising murder levels that started in 2012 are continuing and nothing done since then is working to reduce them.
defenceWeb
Written by ISSAfrica -
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If police learn from their mistakes and implement those lessons, South Africa could become a safer place.
South Africa’s recently released crime statistics reveal worrying increases in violent crime for the last quarter of 2020, including for murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and rape. They show that rising murder levels that started in 2012 are continuing and nothing done since then is working to reduce them.
Has the South African Police Service (SAPS) failed? Of course it has. But so have all government departments, corporations and non-profit organisations, and not only in relation to crime. At some point, we all fail. Failure is inevitable, but learning from failure is not.
South Africa’s recently released crime statistics reveal worrying increases in violent crime for the last quarter of 2020, including for murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and rape. They show that rising murder levels that started in 2012 are continuing and nothing done since then is working to reduce them.
Has the South African Police Service (SAPS) failed? Of course, it has. But so have all government departments, corporations and non-profit organisations, and not only in relation to crime. At some point, we all fail. Failure is inevitable, but learning from failure is not.
The world failed to prepare for the current pandemic. But it has since demonstrated the value of testing, observing, failing and learning in the face of catastrophe, stemming the spread of Covid-19 and developing multiple vaccines in record time.
The arrangements to transition the turbulent Central African Republic (CAR) to normality could be described as the triumph of naive hope over brutal reality. Attempts to administer justice and hold elections in that country are certainly heroic. But they do raise important questions about the sequencing of reforms.
On 16 February the trial of Alfred Yekatom and Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the CAR opened at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
This was the first trial before the ICC for crimes of the anti-balaka. After Muslim Séléka leaders ousted president François Bozizé in 2013, the anti-balaka Christian militias retaliated in what became a brutal tit-for-tat war, killing many civilians. On 24 January, the CAR government transferred the first Séléka suspect, Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, to the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Bangui in 2013.
ISS: CAR attempts democracy and justice amid violent chaos defenceweb.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from defenceweb.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.