The lack of research and policy on crime and policing in South Africa’s rural areas can largely be attributed to the safety and security policy agenda being set by the concerns of the public, business organisations, the media and pressure groups concerned with the urban environment and the urban focus of policing.1

However, more than 18 million people, or 46% of South Africa’s population, live in rural areas. Further, the history of racial discrimination in South Africa has ensured that this population remain predominately very poor, undereducated and underemployed. This is indicated in table 1 below, which is derived from the findings of the 1996 South African census.2

Table 1: Population profile of South Africa’s provinces

Highlighted in this table is the fact that the vast majority of South Africa’s poor live in rural areas. As May points out:

"the rural areas contain 72% of those members of the total population who are poor. The poverty rate (the proportion of people falling below the poverty line) for rural areas is 71%."3

However, despite the high levels of poverty, undereducation and unemployment — factors often posited as conducive to high rates of crime — crime in the rural areas is generally thought to be lower than that which occurs in South Africa’s cities and suburban areas.

Thus, apart from the high profile response to sporadic violence in areas like Tsolo/Qumbu in the Eastern Cape and Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal, as well as the government’s rural protection plan which aims at combating violent attacks against commercial farms and smallholdings, there has been little strategic assessment of rural crime and the requirements for its reduction.4

Yet, the results of South Africa’s first national victim survey, published in 1998, indicate that the difference between levels of crime in urban and rural areas is not as great as may be commonly thought. This is particularly true of violent crime.

For instance, 29.9% of those living in urban environments experienced at least one crime during the five-year period from 1993-1997 compared to 26.1%, of those living in rural areas. However, where 6.6% of those residing in urban areas experienced at least one violent crime in 1997, 6.4% of those living in the rural areas were victimised.5

The national victim survey therefore suggests that people in the rural areas are victimised at rates similar to those of their urban counterparts. What differs most though, is the impact of the victimisation.

First and most important here is the ‘absence of power’, particularly the power to influence change, which, according to May, "is virtually a defining characteristic of being poor."6 Thus, May notes:

"poverty is characterised not only by a lack of assets and inability to accumulate them, but also by an inability to devise an appropriate coping or management strategy in the face of shocks and crises."7

While this is true also for the poor in urban environments, it is compounded in rural areas where the lack of infrastructural services — like communication and transportation — makes access to limited social services like health, welfare and policing extremely difficult. Lacking access to such support, the rural poor are the least able to deal with the impact of crime.

The purpose of this monograph is therefore to indicate the extent and nature of crime in ‘deep’ rural areas inhabited largely by the poor. It also outlines how crime affects people in the rural areas, and maps some of the issues, particularly those related to policing, which are relevant to the reduction of crime in the rural areas. It is hoped, therefore, that the monograph can contribute to the policy process of the department of safety and security.

Notes

A See Louw & M Shaw, Stolen opportunities: The impact of crime on South Africa’s poor, ISS monograph 14, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, July 1994.



See Statistics South Africa, Census in brief, Statistics SA, Pretoria, 1988.



J May, Poverty and inequality in South Africa, report prepared for the office of the executive deputy president and the inter-ministerial committee for poverty and inequality, 13 May 1998.



The issue of attacks against farms is dealt with in depth in M Schönteich, Attacks on farms and smallholdings: An evaluation of the rural protection plan, ISS monograph series, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, 2000, and is therefore not discussed here.



See Statistics South Africa, Victims of crime survey, Statistics SA, Pretoria 1998.



Ibid, p 3.



Ibid, p 44.