The Cato Manor Development Association (CMDA) was formed in 1993 to promote the ‘integrated development’ of one of South Africa’s largest informal settlements. The ‘integrated development’ approach posits that programmes to provide infrastructure, housing, education, economic opportunity, social outlets, and the like should be coordinated by a single management organisation, as each of these areas of intervention affects the others.

Shortly after the inception of the CMDA, robbery of contractors and conflicts between rival shack lords made it clear that security would have to be added to this list. In late 2000, after years of work, the CMDA initiated a ‘crime audit’ of the Cato Manor area. The chief component of this audit was the victimisation survey discussed in this article. A total of 841 households were surveyed (about one household for every 100 residents), randomly sampled from some 14 sub-communities that make up the area.

Today, levels of development in Cato Manor vary greatly. Just over 40% of the households polled were shack dwellers, with a third living in government-built multi-room housing, and 16% residing in independent brick and mortar housing. The median household size was four members, three of whom were adults. Ethnically, the sample was 90% Zulu-speaking, with small pockets of Indian residents.

Feelings of safety

Given the lack of formal housing and the poverty of the area, levels of victimisation in the last year across a range of crimes were surprisingly low. Comparing the Cato Manor data to that gathered in an ISS survey of the greater Durban area in 1997 (Figure 1), shows the Cato Manor rates to be very close to those of a sample taken from the general population. Assault and murder levels were actually higher in Durban as a whole. This would suggest that, in Durban, Cato Manor is not a particularly dangerous place to live.

The 1997 levels may be artificially high, however, due to the fact that they were gathered in a street survey, rather than a household survey: those who have little to complain about might be less likely to participate in a street survey than a household survey.

While these figures are generally positive, they still show that one in every 10 households in Cato Manor was burgled in the last year. Even worse, the definition of ‘burglary’ used by the ISS in previous surveys was followed, which includes crimes that would be legally classified as household robbery, as will be discussed below.

Nervous at night

Despite this, most of the respondents (69%) reported feeling ‘very safe’ or ‘fairly safe’ when walking in their area during the day (Figure 2). This stood in sharp contrast to their perceptions after dark, when 80% felt a bit unsafe or very unsafe walking in their area (Figure 3).

This extreme contrast between daytime and night-time safety is unusual, and points to an infrastructure problem — lack of street lighting. Victims reported not being able to identify perpetrators in the dark, allowing criminals to act with impunity. In the shack areas where up to 90% felt unsafe, there are not even streets to light. This level of ‘fear of the dark’ is remarkable by international standards, as Figure 4 indicates.

The fear of victimisation may have a greater impact on quality of life than victimisation itself. If, as follow-on questions in the survey suggest, over 60% of the residents of Cato Manor simply refuse to go out after dark, then the lack of street lighting is seriously limiting employment, social, and educational opportunities for residents.

No safer at home

But development-related crime problems do not end there. Both home-made and government-constructed housing was found to be lacking in terms of basic security. Over 40% of the respondents said they took no precautions to prevent their household being victimised, including the use of locks on doors. Apparently, security locks are not part of the public housing package, and in shack areas, traditional ‘target hardening’ makes little sense — why secure the door when the wall can be kicked down? In addition, few Cato Manor residents kept dogs (6%), since most had little room to keep them. In contrast, the 1997 ISS survey found that keeping a dog was the most popular form of protection among Africans in Durban generally, with 18% reporting owning one.

As discussed above, burglary is the major crime most often experienced and most feared in Cato Manor: 156 incidents of burglary were discussed in detail by the residents in the survey. As might be expected given lighting conditions, 70% of the burglaries occurred after dark, and given that many people refuse to go out at night, it is not surprising that the residents were at home in about half the burglaries.

What is surprising is that threats or violence were used in a full 30% of the cases. Given the size of most of the homes in the area, it is likely that in the remaining 20% of the cases when the victims were at home but where force was not used, the victims simply allowed the burglars to go on about their business without confrontation.

In 20% of these "burglary" cases, a gun was used. In 8%, injuries were inflicted, and in 6%, hospitalisation was required. This is not burglary in the ordinary sense, but a far more traumatic crime altogether, which needs to be studied in its own right.

The perpetrators gained entry to the home by a wide range of means. Most often, in about a quarter of the cases, a secured door was simply forced open, pointing to weaknesses in construction. In 14% of the cases, force was used on the residents to gain entry. In another 12%, the door had no security features at all, and so the perpetrators simply walked in. In 11% of the cases, entry was gained by trickery. In nearly every case, the burglars entered straight through the front door — rarely were windows or other means of entry used.

Unfortunately, only 41% of the victims reported this crime to the police. This is a very low reporting rate for burglary and is probably due to the fact that the property was insured in only 17 cases (13% of cases where property was taken). Many of those that did not report the burglary said they felt reporting was simply not necessary or important (32%) but nearly a quarter said they used other means to resolve the situation. This was not difficult because in 58% of the cases, the victims said they knew the people who burgled their homes.

Integrated development may hold solutions

Thus, as this very brief sketch shows, criminal victimisation takes on some unique features in areas of high density and low development. Burglary in particular is not the anonymous crime of stealth encountered in the suburbs. Much of this vulnerability could be reduced by the provision of basic infrastructure, rather than relying on criminal justice solutions. This study highlights the fact that security and development are highly interrelated and that the ‘integrated development’ approach should be kept in mind by criminal justice policy makers.

Ted Leggett
Institute for Security Studies