Cost of violence taking its toll on society

The link between violence and lack of economic progress has been explored sufficiently to establish it. However, appreciation for this link does not seem to have found the traction it deserves. Many countries spend a fortune trying to contain violence at cost levels far beyond what is economically efficient.

The Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) has taken a keen interest in this area, producing reports which demonstrate the link between peace and economic development. In one of their reports, The Economic Value of Peace 2018, they demonstrate the economic benefits associated with improvements in peace. They also provide evidence which shows that violence leads directly and indirectly to lack of economic progress.

“Moreover, the mere anticipation or expectation of future violence has deleterious economic impacts. Fear of falling victim to violence changes consumption and work-related decisions. It leads to increased transportation costs, reduced productivity and dampened consumption,” says the report.

There are few South Africans who can say they have not at one time or another feared for their physical safety as a result of the prevalence of violent crime. We know also, coming from Women’s Month, that an overwhelming number of women and children also experience this debilitating fear everyday. Perhaps among South African men, the prospect of answering such violence with their own violence remains a form of emotional retort to the onslaught of violence which plagues our country.

What the report says is far more than an academic exercise for South Africans, it is a lived experience.

How many South Africans have been forced to change their route home because of the prospect of violence? How many of us have given up jobs, closed their tuckshops, abandoned their businesses, gone to work stressed and traumatised because they witness violent crime on a regular basis?

How many of us have experienced violent crime personally? How many South Africans sometimes wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night because of a barking dog or some noise in the night? It’s a debilitating state of existence and it does nothing to create a conducive environment for economic well-being, or any sort of well-being for that matter.   

“Fear of victimisation could also lead to adverse mental health effects such as anxiety, anger and reduced mental wellbeing, all of which have productivity related implications. In addition, the social cost of the fear of violence manifests itself in reduced trust in society and the erosion of social cohesion,” says the report, as if it is doing a case study on SA.

It is no wonder that our society shows so much signs of dysfunction. We are locked in a cycle of violence, despair, poverty and destruction. If I sound melodramatic, perhaps the real problem is that we have become too accustomed to violence, so much so that we have welcomed it as a way of life. How else can we explain the killing of a highly skilled medical specialist, anaesthetist Dr Abdulhay Munshi? Where else do people like him face bullets in the street like gangsters? Where else do people like his colleague, paediatric surgeon prof Peter Beale, have to hide for fear of being killed?

Perhaps because we accepted the running battles prevalent among tsotsis in the townships, we have allowed violence to escalate. Could it be that we ignored violence when it affected the most vulnerable, and as a result violence has gone uptown? When it was gun battles in the taxi industry, we shrugged it off. When it was “poor” politicians killing each other for positions and tenders, we ignored it. When it was gangster bosses in Cape Town sending foot soldiers to kill each other, including children felled by their stray bullets, perhaps we were intrigued as if watching movies.

Top cop Lt-Col Charl Kinnear, who was investigating several cases involving gangsters in Cape Town, became one of the latest high-profile people to be killed in broad daylight.

The destructive effect of this killing  goes far beyond the horrible devastation it has brought on his family. It is a violation of everything that makes us a country. If a top cop can be killed like this, who can we depend on?

The IEP ranks SA 15 out of 163 countries according to the highest economic cost of violence, at 24% of GDP.

If we want a thriving economy, we’d better deal decisively with the bedfellows of corruption, crime and violence.