ISS TODAY: Lockdown lessons on violence and policing in South Africa

In an effort to enhance policing and violence prevention, a team of Western Cape Government and Institute for Security Studies researchers carried out a study to track and understand violence and policing during South Africa’s Covid-19 lockdown.

With the introduction of Level 3a – the unbanning of alcohol and easing of many other restrictions – murder increased significantly. During this time, it was only 9.5% lower than the same period in 2019. Our team also disaggregated murders by category of weapon used. In 2019, 49%-59% of murders during the corresponding period resulted from gunshot injuries, and 28%-36% from sharp objects . During lockdown, between 62% and 78% of injuries were gunshot-related and only 9%-24% were linked to sharp objects . Similar analysis is found in the South African Police Service lockdown data, where almost two-thirds of murders were associated with firearms.

Two key lessons from this study are that both alcohol and firearms require better regulation. If the alcohol ban helped decrease sharp-object, opportunistic and domestic violence, then better regulation of alcohol may reduce this in future. The study found general support for focused policing. From 15-30 June, all Vodacom and MTN network subscribers in Delft, Khayelitsha and Philippi policing areas received an SMS invitation to participate in the survey. Nearly 5 800 people responded, 49% female and 90% younger than 34.

Despite this general satisfaction with enforcement, 31% of respondents thought violent crime had increased in their community during lockdown while 42% thought it had decreased. Twenty-nine percent said they’d been a victim of crime during lockdown, a rate far higher than the national average of 0.25%-6%, or the provincial average of 5%-9%.

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