South Africa…….
The land of my birth, and what a completely beautiful country it is. Beautiful, yet sad……so, so sad, so much has being wasted and abused. Granted there are many different views on the country and its current state of affairs, but for me I know and I am fully aware that I can never live there again, and the reason I choose this is roughly 98% due to the follow statistics (even though they are better over the prior year, it is still just not ok and no way anyone should be forced to live);
Latest Crime Statistics – South Africa remains a violent country
In September 2010 the government released its latest crime statistics. The scary truth is that approximately 2 121 887 serious crimes were committed in the 2009/2010 calendar year. Over 30% of these were contact crimes, and over 25% were property related crimes.
So what does that mean for the ordinary citizen? Well, if you look at the stats the number of reported crimes have gone down. This is, in itself a complicated issue, because of the problems with reporting, and can reflect mistrust and lack of faith in the police. On the other hand, it could reflect that crime has gone down and that the SAPS are doing a great job. It’s impossible to tell which, so lets just read more about the stats.
Improvements
In the 2008/2009 period there were 18,148 murders in SA, but in 2009/2010 this had decreased to 16,834.
In the 2008/2009 period there were 59,232 reported cases of common robbery, but in the 2009/2010 period there were 57,537.
In the 2008/2009 period there were 70,514 reported incidents of sexual offences, and in 2009/2010 this had decreased to 68,332.
Breakdown of crime
30% of all crimes were assault with grevious bodily harm, 29.2% were common assault, 16.8% were aggravated robbery and 10.1% were sexual offences.
Is it enough?
Whilst these are noticeable and significant improvements it is important to ask – is this enough? South Africa remains an extremely violent country. 30% of crimes were assault with grevious bodily harm.
With 68,332 reported incidents of sexual offences, that boils down to 187 sexual offences incidents per day. If the suggestions of the 1 in 9 campaign are true, only 1 in 9 incidents of sexual offences are reported because of stigma, fear of retaliation and a lack of faith in the police. This means that potentially there were actually over 6 hundred thousand sexual offences incidents, which translates to 1,684 per day, which is over 70 per hour, which means at least one every minute.
So with this said, I feel I must state what the population is:
According to Statistics South Africa’s mid-2009 estimates, the country’s population stands at 49 320 500 people.
This is compared to 310,354,000 population of the USA and a murder rate of 16,204. Therefore, we compare a population of 49.3 million and a murder rate of 16,834 to a population of 308.4M with a murder rate of 16,204. Quite an eye opener.
I say all of this and my heart breaks! I will go back to South Africa to visit as long as I have family living there, which I anticipate to be years and years to come. And I would highly encourage people to visit the country, I have taken friends from MN back with me multiple times and we’ve always had an absolutely amazing time, to that end, bad things could happen to tourists in any country. A country with the amount of sheer beauty that South Africa exhibits does not exist, well in my humble opinion that is. See the photos below. I have travelled through multiple countries in Europe, all through the United Kingdom as well as Ireland, as well as through many States in the USA.
The reason for this blog is this, I had a bad Saturday, I missed home, a lot, this doesn’t happen to me, often, to the level it did on Saturday. I was down and I didn’t want to do anything other than sit here and mope around. I quickly shook it off, well ok, it was Sunday before I shook it off, but for me to shake this off I take a look at stats like these and I realize how much I have going for myself in this country, that, if I am lucky enough to have kids in my future, I want them raised in a country like this (where kids can play in their own yards and with their friends on the sidewalk), sure the USA has its own problems, but weighing the pros and cons, the pros always win. But with all this said, it sure doesn’t make the blues go away when I miss home, when I miss my extended family, when I miss my 7 nieces and nephews, my brothers and their wives and most of all my mom and dad.
However, I know that my family is proud of all I’ve achieved, that they are happy that I am here and making a future for myself, and hopefully giving Casey that same opportunity. I remember all this when I miss home terribly and want nothing more than to go home. And as I told Casey a couple of weeks back, we are allowed those ‘down’ days every now and again, but then we must pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and keep on going.
Sooooo after all this has been said I AM proudly South African, it will always be my land of birth and my home country. I represent the country proudly every single time I pull the country’s flag over my head on the National Team hockey jersey, and will as long as I am physically capable. I did give up living there in order to better myself, and I don’t regret that decision, I never will, and yes, you can be proudly South African and not live there any longer. I did what was required of myself to make a better future.
wonderful post. we’re glad to have you here! maybe some day you’ll have to take some of the pelton’s to your home country 🙂
Debs it is scary seeing it in black and white like this. But life goes on and we have to make the best of it. Love you and miss you so very much my darling girl.