Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction South Africa 2010: From short-term success to long-term decline?
- PART 1 ECONOMY, ECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY
- PART 2 STATE, POLITICS AND POLICY
- PART 3 EDUCATION, HEALTH AND LAND
- PART 4 Doreen Atkinson
- INTRODUCTION Signs of social decline? Crime, prisons, child trafficking and transactional sex
- CHAPTER 17 Our burden of pain: Murder and the major forms of violence in South Africa
- CHAPTER 18 Waiting for Godot: Awaiting trial detainees in South Africa
- CHAPTER 19 Wolves in sheep's skin: Trafficking of children in Musina, Limpopo Province
- CHAPTER 20 Relationships of exchange amongst South African youth in an age of conspicuous consumption
- Contributors
- Index
CHAPTER 17 - Our burden of pain: Murder and the major forms of violence in South Africa
from PART 4 - Doreen Atkinson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction South Africa 2010: From short-term success to long-term decline?
- PART 1 ECONOMY, ECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY
- PART 2 STATE, POLITICS AND POLICY
- PART 3 EDUCATION, HEALTH AND LAND
- PART 4 Doreen Atkinson
- INTRODUCTION Signs of social decline? Crime, prisons, child trafficking and transactional sex
- CHAPTER 17 Our burden of pain: Murder and the major forms of violence in South Africa
- CHAPTER 18 Waiting for Godot: Awaiting trial detainees in South Africa
- CHAPTER 19 Wolves in sheep's skin: Trafficking of children in Musina, Limpopo Province
- CHAPTER 20 Relationships of exchange amongst South African youth in an age of conspicuous consumption
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
In the fifteen years since 1994, official statistics record over 328 000 murders, over 750 000 incidents of rape, close to 1.6 million incidents of aggravated robbery, and 3.6 million incidents of assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. Numerous other incidents, of common assault, indecent assault and robbery, are also included in official statistics. Taking into account the fact that statistics under-represent (particularly nonfatal) violence, it is apparent that South Africa is a country seriously brutalised and traumatised by violence.
Most South Africans are inclined to agree that the problem of violent crime is a serious one. But a continuing feature of contemporary debates about crime is a question about whom it affects (Pharoah 2009; Silber and Geffen 2009). These debates are partly racialised. Many white South Africans, for instance, hold the view that crime, and violent crime, primarily involves young black men targeting whites (Myburgh 2009; 2010), and many perceive women as the primary victims of violence. Meanwhile, the recent outbreaks of xenophobic violence have led to suggestions that much of the violence in South Africa is directed at foreigners, while alternatively, the view is often expressed that it is poor people who are the principal victims (Silber and Geffen 2009).
The problem with all of these views is that while violent crime has common features and underlying causes it is not a uniform phenomenon. Murder, for instance, is probably best understood as a manifestation of a number of different forms of violence. But murder itself, and each of these different forms of violence, affects different groups within South Africa's population in different ways. In understanding the impact of violent crime on people in South Africa, it is necessary to take a differentiated view of violence.
This chapter is therefore largely descriptive in its focus. It aims to describe how murder and the related ‘major forms of violence’, the primary contributors to the overall problem of violent crime in South Africa, manifest themselves. It engages not only with questions about the various groups of victims affected by different aspects of the problem of violence, but also some of the other key commonalities and differences. In so doing it hopes to contribute to establishing a firmer basis for understanding what we are talking about in South Africa when we discuss violent crime.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- New South African Review2010: Development or Decline?, pp. 389 - 409Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2010