JONNY STEINBERG: Rates of murder tell the sorry tale of SA

It may be macabre, but it’s true: the changing rate at which people are murdered tells a lucid tale about the country in which they died. And so it is with SA. The arc of its murder statistics since the coming of democracy is, in a profound sense, the arc of the postapartheid story.

But long after these wars were over the murder rate kept going down. The most precipitous annual declines were in fact all in the 2000s. What accounts for them? One possible reason is a simple piece of legislation and its effective enforcement, the Firearms Control Act of 2000. It is a heartening story, for it shows that thoughtful public policy supported by legislators and implemented with enthusiasm by bureaucrats can have profound effects in the world. Tens of thousands of people are still waking in the morning and walking the streets because in a corner of SA’s public life, governance worked well.

But this is just one part of a larger tale. It is no secret that during Jacob Zuma’s tenure as president swathes of the public service deteriorated rapidly. Policing was no exception. On paper it was still there: its budget, its personnel, its equipment. In practice, it began withdrawing from the world. The statistical evidence is glaring: between 2011-12 and 2019-20 the murder conviction rate halved.

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