Age of hope or anxiety? Dynamics of the fear of crime in South Africa

The fear of crime in South Africa has a negative impact on quality of life at the individual, community and societal levels. This phenomenon, which tends to rely on racial stereotypes, has the effect of reducing the sense of trust and cohesion within communities, limiting people’s mobility and hastening retreat from public spaces. This brief shows that the scope of fear extends beyond a specific minority of the population and that urban, informal settlement dwellers are the most concerned about crime.

The release of official crime statistics in 2006 and persistent images of violent crime in the media have together resulted in placing crime at the top of the public and political agenda. This policy brief is concerned not with the actual levels of victimisation in South Africa, but rather with an important and often-neglected related social phenomenon: the fear of crime.

Attitudinal surveys reveal that general perceptions of personal safety have shown signs of improvement since the late 1990s. However, South Africans emerge as significantly more fearful than people in most other parts of the world, including the developed countries of Western Europe, as well as countries in the rest of Africa and Latin America. Other key findings include:

• men are just as fearful of crime as women
• Indian and black African respondents exhibited greater fear of crime than coloured and white respondents
• in the country’s informal settlements the fear of crime seems most pervasive
• the level of social integration in one’s neighbourhood or community was also shown to be relevant.