South Africa: Country Profile

In Cape Town, South Africa's most popular tourist attraction, the provincial government has already held a number of highly successful joint police and military anti-crime operations. It is setting up a 'super task team' modelled on similar organisations abroad and aimed specifically at organised crime syndicates.

In KwaZulu-Natal, 'Where Durban is the gateway to the province, and the beachfront is the key to the gate,' (says a local city councillor involved in tourism), said beachfront is a hive of security activity. There are beach guards to watch the beach, car guards to watch your car, and flea market guards, presumably to watch your wallet. There is also a Beachfront Business Council to keep an overall eye on things.

In upcountry Gauteng, the South African Police Service (SAPS) is working closely with Business Against Crime and between them they are recording cautious gains in the fight against crime. Programme Johannesburg, a joint SAPS/BAC project, has identified police stations in hot spots, which the BAC support.

At least 10 special training programmes have been set up, putting more 'bobbies on the beat', with civilian volunteers in the stations 'pushing the paper'. The result has been a marked decrease in crime levels. Similarly, the Effective Detective programme has seen a 99% increase in the number of cases actually coming before the courts.

There are other organisations, like Sportsmen Against Crime and the CBD Initiative in central Johannesburg, which are also making a difference, and growing co-operation between hotels and private security companies is creating tourist-friendly zones.

Recently, an international Urban Safety Conference was held in Johannesburg, where the global experience was shared by city-dwellers from around the world. Gauteng, it would seem, is slowly turning the corner. As one senior official put it, 'We have an elephant-sized problem here, but you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time, and that's what we're doing'.