South African soccer star Meyiwa’s death sparked rare campaign for justice

JOHANNESBURG — One week ago Senzo Meyiwa, 27, stood between the goalposts at Sowteo’s soccer stadium, conceding just once as his Orlando Pirates teammates struck four times to beat Ajax Cape Town. A day later, the popular and charismatic captain of South Africa’s national soccer team was dead, and his country was reeling.

Meyiwa may have been a national celebrity, but his fate was all too commonplace, shot in the back during an altercation with burglars at his girlfriend’s house. About 45 people are murdered in South Africa every day.

The next morning, National Police Commissioner General Riah Phiyega announced that she had established a task team made up of top investigators to hunt down Meyiwa's killers. The South African Police Services offered a reward of about $23,000 to anyone providing information that led to the killers’ arrest and conviction. A suspect appeared in court by Friday.

This swift, tough response delighted many South Africans but enraged others, who question why, in a country where 16,259 people were murdered in 2012 and 2013, one case should generate such attention and action. Writing in The Sowetan on Tuesday, businessman Kaizer Nyatsumba looked forward to “the immediate arrest and prosecution of those responsible for the death of Senzo Meyiwa.” But then Nyatsumba shared his own experience of violent crime — and, he said, of wholesale police incompetence.

"Regrettably, my family and I have not seen that level of police professionalism and that sense of urgency when our beloved brother, Elphus Mfana Adonis Motha, was found dead," Nyatsumba wrote.

“He was found in a veld [open field] in the Pretoria area with multiple stab wounds five and a half years ago ... At every turn, we have been confronted with police ineptitude of the worst kind.”

Nyatsumba's experience is probably far closer to that of most South Africans who have been touched by violent crime.

Violence has been endemic to South African society, both during the apartheid era and after. Chandre Gould, a senior researcher in the Crime and Justice Program of the Institute of Security Studies, wrote in a Sept. 17 analysis for nonprofit public policy watchdog Africa Check that until 1994, when the country became a full democracy, “South Africans had little reason to respect the law and no reason to believe in the rule of law.”

“During apartheid, not only were many of the laws unjust and intended to entrench white domination, but unfair laws were also applied unfairly. In addition, the security forces, particularly the police, were used by the state to ensure that all South Africans lived in in fear of the state, regardless of their race,” she wrote.

Gould told Al Jazeera two days after Meyiwa's murder that the crime and the police reaction generated widespread anxiety. South Africans simply don't have confidence in the police service, she said, given their track record. And, she added, “You do want all murders to be treated with the same level of respect and the same level of service.”

The Institute of Security Studies' Gareth Newham, however, said it's unavoidable that Meyiwa's death has prompted a louder outcry and more action. He told South Africa's Times newspaper, “Anywhere in the world, far more attention would be given to the murder of the captain of a high-profile national sports team than a person who has a low public profile.”

He added that there may even be a silver lining in this phenomenon, saying, “It is often high-profile murders that assist to galvanize more people into taking action such as joining community police forums or providing information on the whereabouts of criminals to the police.”

But South Africa's modern criminal justice system is still beset by problems and controversy. Phiyega is just the latest in a string of national police commissioners whose credibility has been called into question. She had barely taken office when police officers gunned down 34 striking miners in Marikana in 2012. South Africa's Sunday Independent reported that she is being investigated by the Minister of Police for, among other things, the alleged involvement of her officers in illegal renditions of suspects across the border to Zimbabwe, problems in crime intelligence and questions around the appointment, suspensions and disciplinary of senior managers.

Her predecessor, Bheki Cele, was fired for playing a “dishonest” role in the awarding of a lease for police headquarters. And before him came Jackie Selebi, who was convicted of corruption in 2010 and later sentenced to 15 years in jail. Stories like these have further dimmed South Africans' faith in the police.

Gould said another problem bedeviling the force is that the detective service is understaffed. In 2013, she says, South Africa lost about 1,200 detectives. Some died, either in the line of duty or of natural causes, and others resigned. It will take time to train their replacements and return the force to full staff.

When the exodus of 1,200 detectives was reported, criminologist professor Anthony Minnaar told South Africa's Times newspaper, “If any organization lost 5 percent of its specialized work force, it would be in deep trouble.”

The police have said before Parliament that they lack a proper retention strategy — and when detectives leave, they are not easily replaced because their skills haven't been passed on to junior colleagues.

South African detectives, according to Minnaar, typically carry 70 to 140 dockets each every month, compared with an international norm of about 25 dockets.

There are three recent events that perhaps irreparably damaged the police force’s reputation. The first was the murder in April 2011 of Andries Tatane, a man from the Free State province. Tatane, who was leading a protest for better services in his community, died in full view of television cameras — moments after being filmed in a confrontation with uniformed riot policemen. Seven police officers were charged with his murder and ultimately acquitted.

Then in August 2012, 34 striking miners were killed by police in the Marikana massacre. Again television cameras were on hand to capture heavily armed police officers taking aim at civilians. A commission of inquiry into the incident is set to hear final arguments beginning Wednesday.

The third case was the death of a Mozambican taxi driver, Mido Macia, who died in a police cell in February 2013. Cellphone camera footage caught Macia being tied to the back of a police van and dragged through the streets of Daveyton, outside Johannesburg. The video was given to South African tabloid The Daily Sun and went viral. Nine police officers are on trial for his murder.

In a paper published in South Africa's Review of Sociology in 2013, criminologist Andrew Faull wrote, "Beyond these well-known tragedies, South Africans die at the hands of police or in police custody daily. The Independent Police Investigative Directorate reported that in the 2011–12 reporting period, 720 people died as a result of police action or in police custody."

That number is down from 797 deaths in the previous year.

Faull said police brutality is at least in part due to rhetoric about launching a war on crime.

He added, however, that the situations police are placed in are often “the result of their being left to bear the burden of ineffective governance and service delivery," as in Marikana.

Professor Catherine Ward of the University of Cape Town's department of psychology and its safety and violence initiative described South Africa as a "perfect storm" for violent crime.

The most recently available homicide figures put South Africa at 31.1 murders per 100,000 people, Ward said. Compare that with Germany, with 0.7 murders per 100,000 people in 2012 and New Zealand with 0.009.

"If there is any risk factor that increases the likelihood a person will be violent, we have it in abundance," Ward said. These include high rates of alcohol abuse and dangerous behaviors like binge drinking, substance abuse, the numbers of families that are split between cities and rural homes, high unemployment rates and malnutrition among children. Taken individually, these issues may not lead to violence, but, Ward said, "All the risk factors that contribute to violence anywhere in the world are present and prevalent in South Africa."

A recent report by international aid agency Oxfam found that 1 in 4 South Africans go to bed hungry each night. About one quarter of the adult population is unemployed — mostly young men poorly educated in the country’s ailing public school system. Those rates of hunger and unemployment and the broader legacy of economic inequality and  social breakdown bequeathed by apartheid have created conditions that nurture violent crime, which has not been effectively countered by a troubled law enforcement system.

Curbing violent crime requires a combination of short- and long-term fixes, Ward said. She recommended that the authorities take steps to reduce access to alcohol and guns and praised the government's child support grant program. That program, which gives guardians or caregivers with low or nonexistent household incomes a monthly stipend of about $30 per child, helping put food on tables. She also commended the government’s early-childhood development programs but cautioned that it would take a generation before its effects were felt.

Meyiwa will be buried in Umlazi in KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday. By then, statistics suggest that about another 270 South Africans will have been killed. Their deaths are less likely than Meyiwa’s to prompt the offering of rewards and creation of police task teams to apprehend the killers.