SAClips

This video examines economic and political developments in South Africa from the late 1970s to provide one explanation as to why crime in So This video examines economic and political developments in South Africa from the late 1970s to provide one explanation as to why crime in South Africa is so high. Beginning in 1976 South Africa experienced the first of three major balance of payments induced recessions that marked the 1976-94 period. That recession, as one would expect, threw millions of mostly black labourers out of work. http://www.worldbank.org/afr/findings/english/find21.htm http://countrystudies.us/south-africa/60.htm Around the same time the ANC escalated its opposition to the National Party government in South Africa. By the mid 1980s most South African townships resembled war-zones between the security forces, the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The violence that the conflict between the ANC, Inkatha, and the South African police as well as affiliated and unaffiliated pro-government and anti-government death squads brought to the townships made these areas extremely unsafe for their inhabitants -- the black majority in South Africa. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963332-1,00 .html http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/southafrica1/5.htm http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/06/southafrica.tops tories3 Another interesting event occurred in the 1980s. From 1980 to 1990 the population of South Africa leapt 56 percent from 24,261,000 to 37,944,000. This is larger than the population increase in any decade before or after. In terms of the PER CAPITA homicide rate, the 1980s were also the most violent decade in post-war South African history (see my video entitled Crime in South Africa). The 1980s were more violent than any decade before or after. http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/CRIMEINDEX/99VOL3NO2/Cemocratic.ht ml So why did the population also spike in this decade? People who had lost their jobs would normally seek to find new employment. But South Africa had a policy called "influx control" until 1986. Blacks without a job could be forcibly dumped in one of 10 designated "homelands". Some 3.5 million people were forcibly removed from their residences and relocated to designated "homelands" throughout the duration of this policy. Unemployed blacks living in townships had a reason to not seek new jobs for fear of being stopped by police, arrested and forcibly relocated. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa081.html Furthermore it was not very safe for blacks to leave their homes due to the violence of the ANC, Inkatha, the state security forces and the death squads. So blacks who lost their jobs during the recessions of 1976 -- 1994 would have mostly stayed at home. The population spike of the 1980s may have been caused by blacks staying at home having more children -- planned or unplanned. The children growing up during this time period would have lived in an environment where violence was rife and people were killed all the time. Young children seeing such violence would have been permanently scarred. By the late 90s these children became teenagers. Their education was limited as school attendance in the townships from 1976 -- 1994 was low, due to the political violence. Many schools were burned and school children were arrested by the state security forces for protesting against apartheid. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFDD153CF 933A25756C0A961948260 Uneducated and exposed to violence from birth, how would these children have turned out? They would become as violent as the environment in which they were raised. The persistently high level of crime in South Africa is in part due to crimes committed by this 1980s generation who were raised without schools and safety. http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=331500&area=/ breaking_news/breaking_news__national/ (more) (less)