The recently released 2014/2015 crime statistics show a third phase of increase in violent crime.
But as the Institute for Security Studies cautions: “The police cannot be held responsible for dealing with all crime, especially not most murders, rape, child abuse and assault. These crimes often start intergenerational cycles of violence and addressing them requires a different approach.”
The different approach looks to people’s living conditions, the services they access, what local economies offer up in terms of livelihood opportunities – in other words the responsibilities of local government.
But is local government in any position to tackle crime and improve community safety? Many municipalities battle with basic service responsibilities. They also have deep-seated political/institutional problems.
In 2012 the National Development Plan (NDP) diagnosed tensions in the political/ administrative interface, turnover in administrative leadership, skills deficits, a lack of accountability and authority, poor organisational design and low staff morale.
The Presidency in its 2014-2019 medium term strategic framework, acknowledged that local government was beset by a lack of accountability and corruption.
Recent safety work with about eight municipalities, three in the Eastern Cape, highlighted some key trends. Across all three municipal types (metros, districts and small rural councils) crime prevention and community safety is not seen as a core municipal responsibility.
Crime and safety is rarely a budget priority or a performance benchmark and seldom features in municipal plans (IDPs).
This is not surprising – local government has been under severe pressure to get its act together and sort out the basics. Community safety is not part of the back-to-basics strategy launched by the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs in September last year.
It might therefore, seem obvious that local government is not particularly prepared or in good shape for additional crime prevention/safety responsibilities. There are however, new and significant insights that could change this assessment.
Issues of social violence and insecurity, for example, are closely intertwined with the basic problems of service and governance failure.
Furthermore in terms of official policy, successive white papers and strategy documents from the Civilian Secretariat for Police since 1998 have underlined the inadequacy of policing and the criminal justice system if not supported by a longer term preventative strategy to ameliorate the social forces that cause crime and insecurity.
Internationally the potential for local government to mount effective community safety interventions is increasingly recognised. Violence reduction strategies in Medellin and Bogota, Colombia, demonstrate that strong municipal leadership, civil society involvement and multi-actor governance approaches dramatically reduce city homicide rates.
Thinking along the same lines, the NDP finds that in South Africa high levels of violence result from a lack of social cohesion, inadequate care of children, apartheid’s spatial legacy in cities and towns, alcohol and drug abuse, and the widespread availability of weapons.
Clearly police and the justice system can impact only some of these factors – social development and municipalities must play a role.
For starters, we need to stop treating crime and insecurity as a recent and short-term social aberration. A vast body of research, including the CSIR’s, shows unequivocally that poverty increases vulnerability to crime and worsens the negative impact of crime on victims.
Poverty and inequality do not correlate directly with levels of crime and social violence, say the experts, but the link is strong and undeniable. Youth who live in poverty, for example, are the most likely to be victims of crime and also perpetrators. Could the answer then simply be increased social spending?
The World Bank has shown that in South Africa real expenditure on housing and community services increased 355% from 1995/96 to 2009/0. Spending on welfare services over the same period increased by 186% in real terms. In fact, as a percentage of GDP, it moved into second place, just behind education. But still we have a growing segment of people below the poverty line and increasingly unsafe communities.
It’s more of a bang for your buck issue says World Bank, “…poor outcomes in public service delivery cannot be explained by inadequate fiscal allocations”.
The Ten Year Review by the Presidency blamed weak frontline services, poor management/supervision and weak partnerships with the private sector and civil society. As tax specialist Michael Katz notes, allocating the funds is only part of the challenge: “It is crucial that funds allocated reach their targets through the actions of an efficient and capable civil service.”
Municipal leadership, being local, is best placed to ensure poverty alleviation and community safety strategies reach the intended targets but they will need to clear their heads of party rhetoric and ambitious political promises and start getting to grips with effective strategies and clear realisable short-term goals.
Above all, councillors and managers need to start taking the issue of partnership seriously and curb the habit of using “public participation” as a public relations or vote-garnering exercise.
Community safety in particular, requires participation of civil society whether it be establishing effective community policing forums or doing crime/safety profiles of neighbourhoods for planning purposes. Citizens actively involved in crime prevention and community safety is also important for local government credibility.
In 2013 participants in the SA Reconciliation Barometer Survey showed the highest confidence levels in institutions of civil society – in particular, religious organisations (67%) and the public protector (64%). The lowest confidence levels were for political parties (46.2%) and the police (47.9%).
The good news for local government was that although it came off a very low base, it was the only institution of state in which levels of confidence improved between 2006 (50.3%) and 2013 (54.5%).
Heading to the 2016 municipal elections it is clear few councils will be able to claim a track record of service delivery or healthy local democracy. While nothing should detract from these core imperatives, one sure way to generate positive political capital in future will be to make communities demonstrably safer.
However, as a councillor from the small Eastern Cape town of Jansenville noted, “… this does not mean the municipality should become a second charge office.”
Indeed, municipal policing is not the answer. Social violence prevention on the other hand looks at what causes dysfunctional families. It takes opportunities to strengthen early childhood development and resilient family structures. This typically includes programmes to reduce domestic violence and drug/alcohol abuse, “keep them busy” type sport/recreation programmes for youth and support for pregnant women. The associated costs need not be prohibitive – many programmes are already in place and need only better coordination and steering.
The Amahlathi municipality based in Stutterheim recently conducted useful research into youth and community safety and is currently a leading example of how to go about safety planning. Amahlathi is still figuring out how to entrench this capability in its administration.
In local government generally however, a small dedicated unit in the municipal administration funded by conditional grants from national, may be all that is required to support the community safety forum (the arena where all the main actors meet to better coordinate safety interventions) and to start rolling out modest but effective safety strategies.
While it may be possible to initially shield these units from typical municipal institutional and financial headaches, their longer-term functionality depends on good governance and capable, honest political leadership being restored within the municipal sphere next year.
Glenn Hollands is based in East London and is a member of Mbumba Development Services. He has worked on several partnerships to improve local governance and community safety since 2003
Municipal role in crime fight
But as the Institute for Security Studies cautions: “The police cannot be held responsible for dealing with all crime, especially not most murders, rape, child abuse and assault. These crimes often start intergenerational cycles of violence and addressing them requires a different approach.”
The different approach looks to people’s living conditions, the services they access, what local economies offer up in terms of livelihood opportunities – in other words the responsibilities of local government.
But is local government in any position to tackle crime and improve community safety? Many municipalities battle with basic service responsibilities. They also have deep-seated political/institutional problems.
In 2012 the National Development Plan (NDP) diagnosed tensions in the political/ administrative interface, turnover in administrative leadership, skills deficits, a lack of accountability and authority, poor organisational design and low staff morale.
The Presidency in its 2014-2019 medium term strategic framework, acknowledged that local government was beset by a lack of accountability and corruption.
Recent safety work with about eight municipalities, three in the Eastern Cape, highlighted some key trends. Across all three municipal types (metros, districts and small rural councils) crime prevention and community safety is not seen as a core municipal responsibility.
Crime and safety is rarely a budget priority or a performance benchmark and seldom features in municipal plans (IDPs).
This is not surprising – local government has been under severe pressure to get its act together and sort out the basics. Community safety is not part of the back-to-basics strategy launched by the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs in September last year.
It might therefore, seem obvious that local government is not particularly prepared or in good shape for additional crime prevention/safety responsibilities. There are however, new and significant insights that could change this assessment.
Issues of social violence and insecurity, for example, are closely intertwined with the basic problems of service and governance failure.
Furthermore in terms of official policy, successive white papers and strategy documents from the Civilian Secretariat for Police since 1998 have underlined the inadequacy of policing and the criminal justice system if not supported by a longer term preventative strategy to ameliorate the social forces that cause crime and insecurity.
Internationally the potential for local government to mount effective community safety interventions is increasingly recognised. Violence reduction strategies in Medellin and Bogota, Colombia, demonstrate that strong municipal leadership, civil society involvement and multi-actor governance approaches dramatically reduce city homicide rates.
Thinking along the same lines, the NDP finds that in South Africa high levels of violence result from a lack of social cohesion, inadequate care of children, apartheid’s spatial legacy in cities and towns, alcohol and drug abuse, and the widespread availability of weapons.
Clearly police and the justice system can impact only some of these factors – social development and municipalities must play a role.
For starters, we need to stop treating crime and insecurity as a recent and short-term social aberration. A vast body of research, including the CSIR’s, shows unequivocally that poverty increases vulnerability to crime and worsens the negative impact of crime on victims.
Poverty and inequality do not correlate directly with levels of crime and social violence, say the experts, but the link is strong and undeniable. Youth who live in poverty, for example, are the most likely to be victims of crime and also perpetrators. Could the answer then simply be increased social spending?
The World Bank has shown that in South Africa real expenditure on housing and community services increased 355% from 1995/96 to 2009/0. Spending on welfare services over the same period increased by 186% in real terms. In fact, as a percentage of GDP, it moved into second place, just behind education. But still we have a growing segment of people below the poverty line and increasingly unsafe communities.
It’s more of a bang for your buck issue says World Bank, “…poor outcomes in public service delivery cannot be explained by inadequate fiscal allocations”.
The Ten Year Review by the Presidency blamed weak frontline services, poor management/supervision and weak partnerships with the private sector and civil society. As tax specialist Michael Katz notes, allocating the funds is only part of the challenge: “It is crucial that funds allocated reach their targets through the actions of an efficient and capable civil service.”
Municipal leadership, being local, is best placed to ensure poverty alleviation and community safety strategies reach the intended targets but they will need to clear their heads of party rhetoric and ambitious political promises and start getting to grips with effective strategies and clear realisable short-term goals.
Above all, councillors and managers need to start taking the issue of partnership seriously and curb the habit of using “public participation” as a public relations or vote-garnering exercise.
Community safety in particular, requires participation of civil society whether it be establishing effective community policing forums or doing crime/safety profiles of neighbourhoods for planning purposes. Citizens actively involved in crime prevention and community safety is also important for local government credibility.
In 2013 participants in the SA Reconciliation Barometer Survey showed the highest confidence levels in institutions of civil society – in particular, religious organisations (67%) and the public protector (64%). The lowest confidence levels were for political parties (46.2%) and the police (47.9%).
The good news for local government was that although it came off a very low base, it was the only institution of state in which levels of confidence improved between 2006 (50.3%) and 2013 (54.5%).
Heading to the 2016 municipal elections it is clear few councils will be able to claim a track record of service delivery or healthy local democracy. While nothing should detract from these core imperatives, one sure way to generate positive political capital in future will be to make communities demonstrably safer.
However, as a councillor from the small Eastern Cape town of Jansenville noted, “… this does not mean the municipality should become a second charge office.”
Indeed, municipal policing is not the answer. Social violence prevention on the other hand looks at what causes dysfunctional families. It takes opportunities to strengthen early childhood development and resilient family structures. This typically includes programmes to reduce domestic violence and drug/alcohol abuse, “keep them busy” type sport/recreation programmes for youth and support for pregnant women. The associated costs need not be prohibitive – many programmes are already in place and need only better coordination and steering.
The Amahlathi municipality based in Stutterheim recently conducted useful research into youth and community safety and is currently a leading example of how to go about safety planning. Amahlathi is still figuring out how to entrench this capability in its administration.
In local government generally however, a small dedicated unit in the municipal administration funded by conditional grants from national, may be all that is required to support the community safety forum (the arena where all the main actors meet to better coordinate safety interventions) and to start rolling out modest but effective safety strategies.
While it may be possible to initially shield these units from typical municipal institutional and financial headaches, their longer-term functionality depends on good governance and capable, honest political leadership being restored within the municipal sphere next year.
Glenn Hollands is based in East London and is a member of Mbumba Development Services. He has worked on several partnerships to improve local governance and community safety since 2003
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