Is crime dividing the rainbow nation?: fear of crime in South Africa

South Africa has been besieged by high crime levels since the late 1990’s, and in the 2009 national election, crime featured prominently in the campaign manifestos of the major political parties. These events raised ethnical questions with regard to perceptions of crime in such a diverse nation.

An Afrobarometer survey dealt with this topic and drew important findings. In this respect, the findings do not support arguments that whites are being victimised to a greater extent than other population groups. However, the results revealed that:

• fear and experience of crime are greatest among Asians and lowest among whites
• indeed, racial and political division on the importance of crime as a national problem may be due to differing priorities among ethnic groups rather than because they experience different levels of victimisation
• as a matter of fact, black and coloured citizens have serious problems that are more central to their survival rather than crimes
• identically, whites and Asians, who are generally less affected by unemployment and poverty list crime as the most serious problem in the country
• therefore, it is evident that differing priorities sharpen the divisions on crime-related issues

Equally important, the results confirmed there is broad consensus that the former government performed poorly on crime.