I am posting this in Current Affairs as I feel it relates to what is happening in the country.



I have been reading a few threads about crime and violence on this forum. A few people ask the question "what can be done?" And I wonder what we (I am going to use we as the collective for South African society and my fellow posters), ourselves, are actually doing about the crime problem in this country.

I know a person can clearly see the difference in severity of crime between a robbery and not stopping at a stop sign. But don’t you think the fact that so many people don’t stop, and rather coast through, is a reflection of the direction this country is heading in?

This country is up in arms about crime, but those same people who complain about the crime rate don’t fully stop at the stop sign, accelerate when the traffic light changes to orange, speed, litter (even cigarette butts out car windows), dump, buy counterfeit DVD's and games, drive under the influence.

The crime is very serious, but considered minor by most people who do it.

Is it not a reflection that we are headed downhill when people don’t even abide by the simple laws, the basic little rules that should keep everything moving?

I think its a bit rich that on the one hand someone complains about how bad the crime is in the country, yet will fly down the highway at 140km/h.


Please add to this. Do you agree or disagree? Where should the anti-crime drive start? Should it not start at home first?

END!

well on principle - yes i agree with you wholeheartedly - but its funny that you chose the red robot incident since the fear of being hijacked is what compels most people to do this

i have sat with people in a car where at 3pm in the morning they refused to stop at a red robot and i have been sworn at by guys behind me cos i stopped at the red robot and some chappie behind me was pooping himself because there were people waiting to cross the road - and the guy even jumped out of his car to tell me how stupid i was to remain standing with a bunch of pedestrians close by - "these blerrie hijackers will get you" is what i was told - i laughed at the oke when these people calmly crossed the road and continued on their way

but yeah - sometimes people are too scared for thier own good - but this is an interesting topic since i have surely been guilty of the littering aspect and at certain times have also put my foot down with my car - but recently i have come to the realisation that if i want to kill myself i am free to do so but i would be a dumbass if i took a few innocent other people with me so i have slowed down - but i only get flashed from behind by guys who have cars in a worse condition than mine is in - these okes shouldnt even be on the road with their derelicts yet they drive like schumacher in an attempt for a course record

as for the litter - i have some friends who have a theory on that LOL - they believe if they litter then some person will be given a job to clean it up - but the state of our streets show this to be a totally incorrect supposition LOL

You make a valid point about the hijacking situation. It is a reality in this country. I have crept over a red light in the wee hours of the morning. I am also guilty of selectively choosing which laws to abide by.

Anyone drive and talk their cellphone?

END!

That mayor in New York who did wonders suggested that starting on the small crimes, and chaning public perspective on crime is the only way to solve it.

Then again he came to SA and said even he had no idea where to begin here...

im sure anyone who has a car and cellphone will not be able to say no to this one LOL - and its a totally dumb idea - "but i can handle it" i have been told (and ive also said on many an ocassion) - but after driving behind some people guilty of the same infringement you tend to realize that people who make the claim about handling it are only bluffing themselves - just drive behind the guy doing it for about 10 minutes and check out how even a drunk driver may be safer than this idiot (note - im not advocating drunk driving here - merely pointing out that most times the idiot with the cellphone is far more dangerous than he realizes)

Seriously, go hug trees somewhere else. Once we got the problem of hijackings, murder and rape solved then we'll worry about busting the litterers Judge Dredd.

Sheesh.

It was my understanding that the Mayor of New York wanted to send a team here to get us started but our wonderful government said thanks but no thanks and that we could handle the problem ourselves.

I think most people's reasoning behind committing little "crimes" such as littering, driving over red robots, not stopping at stop streets et cetera, also involves the fact that bigger and more serious crimes just seem to go by unpunished. You get into the mindset of "if no-one's going to stop the hijacking and rape statistics, who's going to stop me dumping garbage in this deserted field?"

The offenders that do get punished just land up going to jail where, depending on what crime they committed to get in, they'll get educated in how to commit other crimes (often more serious ones) by their fellow jail mates while becoming carriers of diseases due to sodomy and abuse and generally not getting rehabilitated at all which is one aspect of what the system is supposed to do. Prior offenders become repeat offenders. The overcrowding in prisons also sees to it that penalties for some crimes are lessened or not as severe as they would be under less overpopulated circumstances.

Rampant corruption in almost all levels of our government and the police force just makes matters worse since these are the very people we trust the leadership of our country and our safety to.

If I was in a position of complete authority, I would start by stamping out this corruption since it's the insidious root of all crime. In order to do that, the people that perpetrate it (focusing on the police force) need to be given back a sense of pride in their duty. They have to be paid adequately as well, and a system set in place whereby the government cares for their families in perpetuity if they should die whilst on duty.

When the benefits of becoming a police officer start to outweigh the negatives, more people will join up. That will help with the culling of the huge unemployment rate we have in this country. With more dependable public protectors, we'll be able to properly police this country to the stage where criminals will not get away with any crime, be it petty or serious.

The whole prison structure and penal system needs to be looked at as well then of course, since we can't keep shoving people into our overpopulated prisons. Just how far are we willing to go to clean this country up then? Should the death penalty for serious crimes (for example murder, rape) be instated? (Refer to previous posts made on this subject). What I'm getting at is that there should be a clear and understood consequence that offenders should suffer for their crimes. Otherwise jail just isn't suffice to deter criminals from committing crime(s).

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think it'd be one of the first steps towards regaining control of this country.

I agree about the police. We need a better trained, more well equipped, more motivated police force before we can being to seriously combat crime.

Ninja: Although New York did have a problem with serious crime, I don't think it was on a comaparable scale with what we have in South Africa, correct me if I am wrong. Eventually the philosophy 'take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves' will be relevant to South Africa, once a system is in place to effectively deal with serious crime.

In reference to the original post, I can say I don't break many laws besides copyright laws, in terms of downloaded material.

aaahhh yes.....so we must all go on with loads of moronic ways that actually makes all of us just as guilty as the murderers and rapists and thieves - a crime is a crime and yes the punishment should fit the crime - i mean we cant have the death penalty for littering - but people need to realise that all that petty shit that they do just makes them into bigger dumbasses who continue blundering through life

just fucking imagine you were talking on your cellphone while driving and some idiot in front of you throws a chocolate wrapper out his vehicle - your attention is on your moronic conversation with your girlfriend about what colour undies she is wearing - you see this unknown object flying toward you - and brake thinking that its a huge stone about to hit your windscreen cos you are doing 140 on the freeway behind that car with a few trucks on the other side - the emergency braking causes you to swerve and results in you causing a 20 car pileup on the freeway where 10 people die

or even take the situation where the 16 year old spoiled brat rich laaitie "borrowed" his dads golf 4 GTI-R without his permission - normally he would have just gotten a small talking to for shit like that - but try explaining that to the woman trying to cross the street with her 2 month old baby in a pram at what was a green light for her to cross when this dumbass decides he cannot handle the car and stop in time.......oh wait .....sorry you cant explain to the lady !!!! or her kid .......cos they are both dead - just cos some idiotic unlicensed shitbag decides to have a few drinks with his mates and show-off his dads new car (BTW i saw this one happening in front of me)

who is the fucking idiot then - the government didnt want to be bothered with crap like this that the treehuggers complain about until some shit like this hits the fan - then who is to blame - is that dumbass who threw that wrapper or even the moron talking on his phone any better than a genocidal mass murderer

ignoring the small shit eventually leads to even bigger shit than you would expect so i agree with driver on this issue - whilst the big stuff is a concern the small shit is more of a concern cos the people doing it are the ones complaining bitterly about the big shit and thinking with a "holier than thou" attitude

seriously sometimes i think that you need to put your brain into a gear before you allow your fingers to do the typing ziggy......SHEESH

A) Seriously:
1)Dropping a piece of paper, or what the fuck lets go full out, dumping in the veltd does NOT make you as much a criminal as a murderer, or rapist or whatever.
2) We have a thing called (Try to wrap your barin around it) LIMITED FUNDS. If we start telling cops to bust litterer's heads they aren't gonna have the time or money to chase down the real fucking criminals. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like the environment a lot, and I don't thinkwe should contribute to its ruin, but I like non-murderlised people even more than pristine patches of veldt.

b) First of all, I hate talking on the phone. Ok fucking hate it, I don't talk to anyone on the phone unless its absolutely fucking necessary. ESPECIALLY when Im doing something other than sitting around waiting for a call.
SECONDLY Im the worlds worst back-seat driver. Im the firts to bitch when someone decided to go all 'divine wind' in the driver's seat.
Thirdly yeah I chuck shit out of the window from time to time, but I always ensure nobody is behind me to record my number plate.
And FINALLY fines and penalties are already in place to combat these things so STFU about it already.

c) Well its theft and reckless behaviour. I doubt anyone doing this will get off lightly. That punk's prolly looking at boystown.

d) I'll tell you what happened here, some guy eating a candy bar while chatting on the phone cut driver off, and because he didn't have his camera handy to snap a picture and then slander the fuck outta the guy on this site is getting all pre-menstral over it.
There are fines and punishments in place but because of (Watch out for it) LIMITED FUNDS cops can't be everywhere all the time, and occasionally your gonna get cut off by an asshole, but hey, look on the bright side, if some cunt driving in a beamer is too lazy to use his hands free kit, chances are hes too lazy to bucle up and its only a matter of time before he's a statistic.

Thing is I just get pissed of when Driver goes on a crusade defending the so called 'rights' of murderers, crack-whores, rapists and thieves and then follows up by wanting to kill every guy who forgot to wash his hands after taking a piss. See, thats what I call HYPOCRACY and MISSING THE BIGGER FUCKING PICTURE.
And if you think the small stuff is a bigger issue than the big stuff then you need to pull your head out of your ass.

e) Okay, what the fuck is that? A swipe at my -admittely- frequent typos? Or something to do with my eternally bad spelling? Is this an english exam? Or the fact that you disagree with my actual ideas? Or did you just feel like some random unjustified idiotic flaming?

"k" i cannot comment on that since i dont follow up on all of drivers posts so i dont make it my religion to hate the guy for what he says here - this is the last place in the world where i would bother to worry about what anyone really says

but sometimes in trying to look at the bigger picture if you only look at it with one eye and you still wont see the picture in its entirety



no swipes at spelling or typos intended - since i genuinely disagree with your opinion on this issue - we all cannot all be correct all the time - and i have been wrong many times - but here i want to emphasise that no matter how much anyone dislikes driver he cannot be wrong with every issue he brings up - the law of averages dictates that he will be correct sometime or the other and to me this is one of those times - if you felt it was idiotic flaming then it was as idiotic as what you said in your post

i do remember drivers introduction to these types of issues though with the dumping garbage in the veld photos - and since then loads of people have taken a dislike to the oke - i dont know him personally so again i wont comment on who is correct or incorrect in attitude - and likewise i have never had a reason to trade words with you either - but sometimes people need to ease up on other people - by now he should have gotten the idea and adding animosity in threads just isnt going to do anything but make arguments out of issues that are subjective - and yes they are .................since people will never agree on everything

I amnot disagreeing with him because I dislike him. I am disagreeing with him because I genuinely think that the punishments in place for these misdemenors are already sufficient and that bigger crimes need more attention.

There have been times when I have agreed with driver. DO I like him? No not particularily, but I do respect his desire to change the world, even if I think he's focussing on all the wrong areas.
Also, last time I checked he was still a big boi capible of giving as well as he gets without you defending him.

Guys, we're getting a little off-topic here. The questions posed were

In my previous post, I didn't exactly spell it out, so let me do so here. I disagree with the anti-crime drive starting "at home". It should start where it'll do the most immediate good, which as I said in my previous post, would be curbing the corruption in the top levels of our government and police force.

As citizens, we all want to see an immediate deceleration in the crime rate which will be directly the cause of a concerted action by the police force and our co-operation. Yes, the police can't be everywhere, but we as citizens can. Our co-operation is valuable and keeping our guard up is what saves lives.

I still remember an advert on television a while back where a couple are lying in bed and the wife remarks to the husband that she can hear sounds. Soon, he hears them too, but when he investigates, he sees that whatever is happening is happening next door, so he gets back into bed and goes back to sleep.

This is, albeit exaggerated, predominantly the case all over our country. People don't want to get involved in something that will put their own lives in danger especially if it doesn't directly affect them. I'm not saying we should all join neighbourhood watch committees or even worse, become vigilantes, but when communities do come together and respect the law and co-operate with the local police force, the criminals won't have anywhere to go for support.

To go back to the subject of possibly increasing the existing system of penalties for petty crimes: be honest now, if the punishment for something like littering was upped to say, two days in jail, would you as a citizen go and sit those two days in jail or try to bribe the officer? I freely admit I'd bribe the officer. Why?

1) You won't come out of jail the same as you went in. That's right, "Bubba" isn't really a joke in our penal system,
2) The first time this happens it'd serve as a major wake-up call to me and I certainly wouldn't litter again.

That's all it would take really for petty criminals. One good scare and they'll be straight for a long time again. Whereas with career criminals, they're used to jail, used to getting arrested and used to coming back out and committing the same crime(s)...these are the people that need to be targetted.

In a perfect world we wouldn't want people to just do whatever they want against the law until they get caught, but we don't live in a perfect world. People will continue to do things they think they can get away with until they get caught. When they do get caught, condemning them for life (by locking them up where serious criminals can harm them and give them HIV/AIDS/other diseases) you'll just be creating another person which has nothing to lose. We have too many of them in our country already. That's why criminals are becoming more and more brazen.

It's not only that for the most part they get away with their crimes, it's also that they have nothing to lose and don't really know any better. Our present government made false promises to them of housing, food and electricity. The basics which only a few of us are priviledged enough to afford at the moment. Now if you just came out of an era where you were downtrodden and had to go to a filthy, unhygienic bathroom instead of a pristine, sweet-smelling one because of your skin colour and are now pretty much damned to the same fate even though "times have changed", you're not really going to be aware of much else that has supposedly changed.

I can pretty much see now how what I've said above can be twisted around into a racial issue so let me just say this first: like it or not, there are more poor black people than poor white people. The process of integrating them into our workforce has been going on for more than ten years now but still millions will be without work. Refer to my previous post where I suggest just one of the ways in which we could perhaps curb this unemployment figure.

"But hey, this isn't my problem. If they're poor, they should get off their lazy back-sides and work!" Work where? There aren't any jobs.

Back to our government: while they're spending millions on parties and bids to get the Soccer Worldcup/Olympics/whatever hosted in our country, thousands live on the streets and die at night from starvation, crime, drug abuse, et cetera. This is just yet another debate which forms part of all the other debates we've had and with this huge chain of debates none of you can fail to see how everything is interlinked. That, to my mind, is the "bigger picture". Everything is a facet of everything else and addressing the one issue will just highlight another issue.

So while crime is a valid first issue to tackle, we really need to evaluate all of the other issues that have contributed to the level of crime and discuss ways in which we could address them for the better. So far I've touched on

• Corruption in the government and police force
• Poverty and unemployment (goes hand in hand with lack of training and skills)
• Inadequate prison system (and for that matter, inadequate judicial system)
• Poor minimum wage (also a facet of lack of training)

There are many other points, of that I am sure, but I see the above points as part of the rotten core that makes the apple of South Africa look nice and putrid to outsiders.

what are you trying to say...........that a thread like this must only have driver and ziggy participating without anyone else giving their 0.02c ........man..... i disagreed with what you said and i pointed that salient fact out........defending drivers point of view was the way to point that out ........but if you want me to butt out then sure ill stop posting at PM

anyways o-juice well done on your well thought out and well presented argument on the issue

Maybe I was a bit harsh in my first post, maybe it justified your flaming.

But maybe thats because I think paying more attention to litterers and people who talk on their phones while driving than murderers and rapists is a stupid idea which might see midermeners cut by a large number with a '%' sign behind it and will allow real crime to get even more out of hand.

I mean its not like drug trafficking where you bust people for posetion and then move your way up onto the pushers, dealers and lords. Because that guy dropping his coke can next to Driver's driveway where he drives isn't actually an earner for the serial killer in Cape Town whose killing one pre-schooler on a fortnightly basis.

look yeah - i agree with you in essence and yep there are punishments in place for the minor stuff - but a major part of what driver was saying and where my agreement comes in is that those of us who always object to the large crime are also guilty of some petty stuff - and on that basis yeah we should also stop moaning about things where we add to the smaller statistics and dont allow the undermanned uncorrupted section of the police force to really concentrate on the big stuff which is as you point out where the focus should remain - they are forced to come and rap us on the knuckles when they should be flexing their muscles at real criminals

i mean if a guy tries to murder me and i complain to the police and they enter my name into a computer to learn that i have 250 outstanding traffic tickets - should they attempt to apprehend the alleged murderer or should they detain me then and there for my traffic infringements - if we as a whole cut out the small stuff by ourselves and become conscientous citizens then yeah the cops can concentrate on the bigger sharks

so yep if my own backyard is clean i can complain that my neighbours mess begins to intrude into mine - but if mine is equally dirty then who is intruding onto who - its the same with the big crime and small crime - where can i who does so much small stuff wrong now go and judge on misguided oke who doesnt know much better - whereas i should be in a position to allow morality to affect my decisions - i see loads of my friends buying and trading in stolen stuff - and what do i do about it - i cant snitch on them since they are my friends - but when my stuff gets stolen just cos those guys created a market for it can i now go and cry "bloody murder"

there are too many grey areas and areas of contention in this issue for it to be effectively resolved - it never will be but maybe we as part of a more fortunate section of the population could ease it a bit by avoiding doing those small things and that is what ive been trying to say all the time - just was too lazy to type it out

but yeah ziggy you are a good guy and even though i dont want to get on anyones bad side id have to say we should realize that on this issue we will have to agree to disagree - so im not gonna strress over this issue too much anymore - suffice it to say that i will be more careful of my own personal actions from this point forward in terms of the small infringements that have become a habit to me

i think people are complaining more about the violent crime than the fact that people drive like idiots and litter... hell, i get pissed off when i get robbed or cut off in traffic... most people do. but when i read the paper and see that kids get raped and murdered, and people get hijacked and shot or kidnapped and slaughtered, i do blame the state of our society...

i break the rules often, i'll be honest, but my crimes don't nearly equate to the murders and rapings.

i hear you driver... we should all look at ourselves before we blame the crime on the government, but surely they can do something about the violent crime that plagues our communities?

Yeah it's like that advert, drunk driver with new shocks and sober driver with worn shocks, you really don't realize how dangerous it is. What I wanna see is drunk driver with worn shocks, please show us that. Or better yet drunk driver with worn shocks and a cell phone, now that would be entertainment.