RICHARD PITHOUSE: Crisis of violence requires a political solution

South Africa is a terrifyingly violent country. At about 45 deaths per 100,000 people our murder rate is about eight times the global average and the fourth-highest recorded by the UN.

Only Jamaica, Honduras and Venezuela rank higher. Young men are the overwhelming majority of both victims and perpetrators.

There is nothing inevitable about this. After apartheid the murder rate fell for almost 20 years, reaching its lowest point around 2011 before beginning a steep rise from 2012. Political assassinations also began to spike after 2012. From this point onward the escalation in murder and other forms of violence tracks closely with two dynamics: rising unemployment and the collapse of trust in the state.

Both deepened under Jacob Zuma’s kleptocratic and often criminal regime, in which state dysfunction and brazen criminality were normalised. Our politics also began to swagger and threaten in ways that licensed a growing everyday violence.

The scale of violence, extortion and corruption, and the degree to which they have penetrated the state, has produced widespread cynicism. The terrain is ripe for either the further metastasis of growing but still fragmented forms of authoritarian populism, some of it openly criminal, or for a new authoritarian figure, charged with charisma, to storm to the centre of our politics.

For years authoritarian populism — whether on the Trumpian right or in the form of kleptocratic nationalism — has tried to consolidate its base by inciting and pandering to xenophobia. While xenophobic sentiment has successfully been normalised across wide swathes of society, it has not yet become a decisive electoral force.

The authoritarians may find another route into power though. Public desperation has already produced significant support for extrajudicial police killings and promises to crack down on crime by suspending democratic considerations may prove hugely popular.

We have seen this elsewhere. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte made extrajudicial killings state policy. In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele has suspended basic rights and filled vast prisons in the name of public security. Both cases show how quickly democratic norms can collapse when violence is offered as a shortcut to order. The same could happen here.

Moreover, any escalation of police killings in South Africa will, as in Brazil and elsewhere, largely mean an increase in the already very high rates of police violence against impoverished black men. And powerful actors in politics, the state, business and criminal networks will be able to ensure that grassroots activists, honest civil servants and, in time, possibly journalists, are also targeted.

To avoid this we must understand that the crisis of violence and state criminality is the result of political failure. Large parts of the country and large swathes of our people have in effect been abandoned by the state. Millions of young people have no viable route into a stable adult life and schools, clinics, police stations, courts, transport systems and even whole municipalities do not function as public institutions in any meaningful sense.

In this vacuum the mafias running extortion, tenders and other rackets become a powerful presence in daily life in communities and institutions. With criminalisation within the state, including the police, people trying to do an honest job risk brazen intimidation and, in all too many cases, assassination.

In this vacuum the mafias running extortion, tenders and other rackets become a powerful presence in daily life in communities and institutions.

Despair and fatalism are widespread, but pessimism should not be absolute. Other societies have made progress in similar situations. Ecuador offers a valuable lesson. When Rafael Correa’s left-leaning government took office in 2007 Ecuador had suffered decades of institutional decay. Police were poorly paid, widely mistrusted and often corrupt.

The state was often absent from everyday life and, when present, widely mistrusted. Poverty was deep and widespread. The homicide rate stood at 15.9 per 100,000. Yet within 10 years it had fallen to 5.8 — one of the sharpest declines recorded anywhere in the world.

This transformation came from the reconstruction of democratic capacity. Police salaries tripled. Training was modernised and policing professionalised. Lawful forms of community policing were supported. As the state became a positive and effective actor, the social chemistry of entire neighbourhoods changed.

Social investment was equally decisive. Poverty fell by more than 40% and extreme poverty was almost halved. Entire communities that had been left to fend for themselves gained access to healthcare, education and basic income support. As former Ecuador prime minister Guillaume Long notes: “The administration oversaw a marked improvement in living conditions… By the end of Correa’s tenure poverty had been reduced by 41.6% and inequality … had fallen by 16.7%.”

When the right returned to power in 2017 it swiftly turned on the institutional foundations that had reduced violence so effectively. IMF austerity was embraced, welfare programmes cut and deregulation and privatisation advanced. The budgets that had enabled independent prosecution, professional policing and intelligence were slashed. Militarisation was used as a substitute for institutional capacity.

Inevitably criminal networks rapidly moved into the vacuum. Violence exploded and Ecuador experienced an eightfold surge in homicides — one of the most dramatic escalations in murder in recent history. The lesson is clear: when the social state retreats opportunities are created for criminal power to seize the space.

In Bolivia, the murder rate halved under the left government of Evo Morales as the state became more inclusive and capable. Extreme poverty fell from 38% to 17%. Police professionalisation, salary improvements and community-based policing rebuilt trust. Violence declined as democracy deepened, the state gained social legitimacy and material security improved.

Mexico City shows how this can work in an urban context far more vast than Johannesburg or Cape Town. When Claudia Sheinbaum became mayor in 2018 the city was marked by widespread public mistrust and racked by entrenched criminal violence and infiltration of state institutions. During her tenure murders fell by about 40%.

Her administration moved swiftly to establish social programmes for youth, women and vulnerable communities. At the same time it professionalised policing, rebuilt investigative capacity, expanded forensic capacity and strengthened prosecutorial independence.

Since becoming president in September last year Sheinbaum has reported an extraordinary 37% reduction in daily killings across the country. Mexico still faces severe forms of violence and organised criminality, but this is significant progress.

There was also progress during Lula da Silva’s first presidency in Brazil. In each of these cases it was progressive governments — not authoritarian populists or technocratic centrists — that rebuilt institutions, reduced violence and weakened criminal power.

This was achieved through two intertwined strategies. The first was to expand welfare, cut poverty and stabilise precarious households, reducing the desperation on which criminal economies feed. The second was to professionalise and depoliticise policing, raise salaries to reduce bribery, strengthen investigative and forensic capacity, and protect prosecutors.

Together these efforts made the state visible and welcome in long-abandoned communities and enabled institutions to be met with growing trust rather than cynicism and fear.

In South Africa we cannot continue as we are, but the conditions for an authoritarian turn are already with us, and the choices we make now will shape our future. If we fail to deepen and defend our democratic gains as we work towards social solidarity and repair, we risk a rapid drift into a more authoritarian society.

If that path is chosen we will only open the gates of hell a little further to enable more state killings of impoverished people in the name of a wholly illusory idea of public safety.

• Pithouse is a distinguished research fellow at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies in Dublin and New York, an international research scholar at the University of Connecticut, and an extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape.