Dear members of the local community 

I have come here among you today to talk about something which concerns every one of you. It is something that encroaches on everyone’s personal safety, privacy and a sense of belonging to the community. It is something we share a concern about. I have come here today to talk about crime.

I have not come here to simply recount how bad the problem is. Nor have I come to offer mere words of solidarity and condolence to the local victims of crime. I have come to identify the causes and outline various ways of dealing with crime. In short, I have come to you with solutions. And even more importantly, as much as I have come here to talk, I have also come to listen. 

How can one even begin to describe crime and its devastating impact on the South African people? Recently, in Parliament, I attempted a brief summary. I said that crime and violence exist and persist in this country at levels that would be considered unacceptable by most societies around the world. Many of the killings and hijackings are unspeakably brutal.

Rape has reached intolerable levels. So has domestic violence and child abuse. 

South Africa's crime wave has become as frightening in the rural areas as it is in the cities. In the eleven years since the transition from apartheid to democracy, almost 1,700 farmers have been killed on South African farms. And the farm attacks and common burglaries, where no one was killed, number in the tens of thousands. 

As a result, crime and violence threaten both foreign investment and the growth potential of tourism which is extensive, given South Africa's unique natural assets, such as its vast landscapes, rich wildlife - not to mention the eagerly awaited hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. These are objective facts. Then there are perceptions.

 One particular remark about crime struck me recently when it was uttered by no greater authority on the subject than Mr Bheki Cele, KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Community Safety and Liaison. He was wondering "what is it that makes a person who has hijacked your car to first drive away and then return to kill you". Most of us know the answer instinctively. It is the permissive nature of our society. 

It is the lenience that permeates our attitudes towards criminals as opposed to the shock we express at the crimes they commit. Crime is bad.

Yet in our analysis, we somehow disconnect criminals from their crimes.

Instead, we prefer to blame the wickedness of society. We tend to place too much emphasis on the human rights of perpetrators. 

As a result, our newly cultivated human rights culture often favours the flagrantly guilty. This happens despite the obvious and priceless benefits of such a culture for our society as a whole. It seems to me that we have boxed ourselves in. Is there a way out? 

Given South Africa's violent history of colonialism and apartheid, no one expects the new democratic government to surrender to authoritarian prejudices. There is no need for draconian measures. We only need to acknowledge that rights come with responsibilities. We need to be as tough on crime as on the complex socio-economic causes of crime. 

Furthermore, we need to recognise that the fear of crime is as significant as crime itself. How can we do this? First of all, we need to rebalance our judicial system in favour of the victim. This will require introducing more retributive justice. By committing crime, the criminal has created an imbalance in the social order that must be addressed by action against the criminal provided the retribution is proportional to the crime. 

This suggestion sounds like it should be left to the judiciary alone, but it should not. The toughness that drives retributive justice can be meaningfully re-applied to the police efforts in the prevention of crime.

A well-trained, well-resourced and, even more importantly, well-motivated police service can make a tangible difference in our communities. 

But so can our own attitudes towards police in our areas. In our increasingly permissive society, we find it easier to excuse improper behaviour away rather than improve standards and norms of proper behaviour. We like to espouse that there are so many causes of criminal behaviour that crime is simply beyond the control of police. 

Consequently, we tend to excuse police from having any responsibility for the prevention of crime. Here we are wrong. Our police, and indeed we all, need to rediscover the essential truth that crime is caused by criminals. 

The American police, for example, rediscovered it through the so-called "first broken window" syndrome. The term came out of an experiment where the researchers put a car on the street. At first, the vehicle, though abandoned, was left untouched. But whenever the researchers broke a window or removed a tyre, within a short period of time vandals swarmed around the car and dismantled more parts. 

We must remember that the general decay in our inner cities and the crime that accompanies it started with that first broken window. Or take graffiti, which bothers many of us in our neighbourhoods, but which we tend to overlook as a novel form of urban art in which the poor and the young can express themselves - even though this “art” encroaches on private and public property. 

By ignoring graffiti, we are encouraging a form of disorder and disrespect for other people's property which essentially engenders the fear of crime.

The same applies to litter in our streets. My and party’s answer to the problem is reactive policing.

We can reclaim control of our cities by demanding, encouraging and supporting reactive policing. The efficiency and effectiveness of police should be measured by the visibility and randomness of their patrol and their ability to respond quickly to calls for assistance. Our police service personnel need to become serious about measuring their impact both on what crime they are preventing and on how they are responding to crime.

That is why police were invented in the first place. 

In practice, reactive policing will require the political will of our mayors and municipal officials as well as a smooth coordination of all agencies of government. This means, for example, that the departments of Local Government and Transport would work with other local agencies to suppress the likes of graffiti and littering that generate the fear of crime and contribute to our victim mentality. 

The police need to make their presence known to the criminals as much as to the rest of us. This is the true declaration of war on crime in our streets and backyards. The essence of this approach is local partnership.

In my experience, effective local partnerships with strong local leadership are at the heart of tackling anti-social behaviour and crime effectively.

Those local partnerships obviously need the backing of central government.

You need the right legal framework to give you the power to take tough action, and you need the resources to ensure that you can enforce those powers and follow up the actions that you take. Whereas central government cannot make the decisions, they can provide a framework of powers. Then it is the job of local leadership to act. 

The IFP in local government has a proven track record of working closely with the communities. We believe that if a community needs greater powers within the context of local government, we provide them because, in a communal context, we share a common interest. 

It has always been the cornerstone of IFP philosophy to give power to the people. We passionately believe that people should govern their own lives to the fullest extent possible at the local level and that they should be empowered to do so effectively. That is why local government matters and that is why municipal democracy, municipal functions and municipal institutions are so important. 

The powers local government can give a community can be used to make a real difference and it is the quality of the local partnership which makes the difference between policing that is random and inconsistent and policing that is genuinely in touch with the local community. 

It is therefore essential that we take this agenda forward together. We can be of great help to you, but only you - as a closely-knit community - can make things happen on the ground. My purpose in addressing you today is to offer you a genuine partnership with us in meeting the challenge of crime and disorder in our communities. It is in all our interests that we succeed. 

I thank you.