Linking high crime to poverty is 'unfair' - Expert
A violence monitor in KwaZulu-Natal
says blaming the country's high crime rate on poverty, is misleading, and
unfair to the poor.
Mary de Haas has been reacting to comments made by President Cyril Ramaphosa after his visit to the White House this week.
Following what had been a tense exchange with Donald Trump on the issue, Ramaphosa told reporters that poverty was a major contributor to violent crime in the country.
De Haas says South Africa has a violent past but oftentimes it is not the poor who initiate crime.
"Poverty does not cause crime. It can facilitate it. A colleague of mine who sums up things very well, Professor Paul Zulu, said the point about poverty is [that] it allows people to be recruitable," said De Haas.
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"You look at other African countries where there are high levels of poverty, they don't have the high levels of crime we do. It's a historic problem."
She says organised crime is a major concern.
"It's about policing. It's about court. So, this is a whitewash saying it's just about poverty. It's much more complicated.
"We need a proper unit to address organised crime because organised crime feeds ordinary crime [like] people stealing to feed their drug habit."
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