Govt takes aim at criminals, as gun violence toll rises

Escalating gun violence in Johannesburg, South Africa, has brought overwhelming public support for a police 'shoot-to-kill' policy against armed criminals.

After a series of bloody incidents that has shocked even crime-hardened South Africans, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said this week that any criminal pointing a firearm at a policeman or a citizen would be shot. Members of the public interviewed by IRIN said the government had finally woken up to the reality of gun violence.

Percy Mvela, an office worker in Johannesburg, commented, "I am sure the government now realises that their soft approach to armed crime has achieved the opposite result. My view is that the law has been advocating for the rights of criminals more than their victims. Anyone who shoots other people does not respect the right to life of others and, therefore, should not have their own rights protected. It is high time the criminals and their families started feeling the losses everyone has gone through."

A security guard, who refused to be named, said, "Shoot-to-kill is welcome, but now that the government has woken up to what the people on the streets see every day I think we need more plainclothes detectives who will be able to identify and deal with armed criminals even before they threaten anyone. There are too many guns on the streets. Everyone I know is fed up with crime and until now we thought government was helpless."

According to a businessman in one of the city's up-market malls, "It is good to say 'shoot to kill.' However, this alone will not be enough until the corrupt members of the police force are eliminated. There are many cases where serving police officers and soldiers have been found among gang members in cash-in-transit heists and bank robberies. More needs to be done, even if it means deploying the army to launch a crackdown for some time."

Trevor Bloem, a spokesman for Nqakula, told IRIN that contrary to public perception, the shoot-to-kill policy was an established strategy in the fight against crime. "There is nothing new in this, as it is provided for in Section 49 of the Police Act, which defines the conditions under which police officers can use lethal force. It does not open the doors for police to shoot unarmed suspects or petty thieves trying to flee from arrest."

Buyani Tshethla, a researcher at the Institute of Security Studies, an African think-tank based in Pretoria, said the reiteration of the policy was a sign that the government was also getting worried about the high incidence of violent crime.

"Recent incidents, like the gunning down of people on the streets and the weekend killing of four police officers in a shootout with criminals in a hideout in the downtown suburb of Jeppestown in Johannesburg, could have provided the wakeup call for the implementation of robust anticrime measures; the measures have been there, what was lacking was implementation," Tshethla told IRIN.

Drive-by shootings have claimed the lives of five people in the past two weeks, while the six-hour shootout in Jeppestown, which left four police officers and eight suspected armed robbers dead, has made headlines for days. Violent crime was the subject of a heated discussion in parliament recently, when the opposition accused the government of not doing enough to curb it.

Ronald Bobross, president of the Law Society of South Africa, said a review of the law was needed to give the police effective anticrime powers, including shoot-to-kill. "However, they have to be trained adequately in human rights to avoid indiscriminate shooting, which may add to the existing crime wave and undermine public confidence in the force."

The Control Arms Campaign, jointly run by Amnesty International and Oxfam, released the results of an international survey last week, revealing that 94 percent of Brazilians were afraid of becoming a victim of armed crime, while in Guatemala 88 percent feared the possibility.

South Africa was placed third, with 72 percent of people being worried about criminal violence and 73 percent of South Africans supporting the imposition of strict controls on the destination of exported weapons and better arms control measures locally.