Saturday, 19 December 2009

Safety in South Africa

Everyone in South Africa seems to be obsessed with personal safety. South Africa (Jo'berg in particular) has the highest murder and rape rates in the world, so perhaps this is the reasoning behind it. My sister and I were strongly advised not to walk through the city centre on a Sunday at noon.


This was in the shopping mall in central Cape Town. Carjacking, murder, child abuse, it's all there. Click on the pic to read each card.


This is a security guard in Jeffrey's Bay. Not sure exactly what he was doing.
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3 comments:

  1. Unknown26 December 2009 at 06:36

    The security guard? Taking a nap, of course - J'Bay is about chilling out, after all! ;-)

    South Africans are obsesssed about safety because every one has either experienced crime personally or knows someone who has. And as you will have noticed, the crime, including household burglarly, here is predominantly violent. Crime, for many, has become an easy and glamorised lifestyle. Drugs, particularly chrsytal meth, are often taken prior to committing an offence. The policing and justice system aren't able to cope with the rates of crime, so the average South African knows that most criminals walk free - unsurprisingly, all that puts crime top of mind.

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  2. Anonymous26 December 2009 at 09:48

    How much of it is in the mind though?

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  3. WhatKathyDid27 December 2009 at 09:20

    I wondered how much of it was anxiety - most young South Africans I met had not experienced violence themselves. I was tempted to walk through the Cape Town financial district on Sunday, just to see how dangerous it really was, but then of course I didn't. I wasn't willing to take the risk.
    Certainly from walking around, I got the feeling that Cape Town is much more dangerous than London.
    Anyway, rather than conjecture, here are some of the (sobering) facts. http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/stats/CityReports/Documents/Crime%20in%20Cape%20Town%202001-2008C.pdf

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