Tuesday 6 July 2010

World cup a disaster for Afro peccimists and a stat slap down.

Anyone following anything relating to South Africa knows that following up to the world cup certain South Africans, mostly ones who have left the country rather than live under a black government , set about on a massive campaign of scaremongering.

In an effort to promote the idea that blacks were not fit to run a country they sought to push the idea that South Africa was some kind of dysfunctional blood bath of insatiable crime. And to a large extent it worked and many people canceled their plans to travel here out of a fear of certain death.

Of course others like me tried to call for a rational minds and to point out that crime in South Africa is for the gross part isolated to certain communities and risk groups (young colored or black males) and quiet easily avoided. South Africa has a very low tourist murder rate and is a very safe country to travel in. We've hosted a cricket and rugby world cup, an African cup of nations , a commonwealth games as well as countless cricket and rugby tours with massive overseas attendance without so much as a serious incident. There was no reason to suggest the football world cup would be any different.

The Afro pessimists of course knew this. This is why they put so much effort into keeping people away. Their great fear that after years and years of winning the minds of the world with their fear-mongering that it would all be undone the moment people got to South Africa and actually saw the moderate truth. And of course this has happened. The internet are filled with people reporting the real situation in a very positive light and altering the insanely negative perceptions many have about South Africa and even Africa. Some reporting even being angered at the media that forced some of their friends or wives not to join them with their one sided and alarmist reporting.
Of course once the world cup started the afro pessimists, bitter and twisted vacant souls that they are, started to pray for something horrible to happen to tourists. Sites like this started up and since closed down due to having nothing to report and looking like total loons. That very same site around about day four already filled my predictions and dropped all pretense of being a "crime reporting" blog and instead was posting typically racially intended pictures of monkeys and KFC etc. Lol. You've got to love the right winged lunatics.



They're nothing if not predictable.

Anyway, enough about silly people and let's get to the meat of today's "stat slap down".

First the usual disclaimer. It should be obvious to anyone that any crime where someone got hurt is entirely unacceptable. May the country and the police work swiftly so that it becomes entirely unnecessary for us to have to even talk about such grissly events. I do not mean to be callous towards anyone who have been a victim of what I can only imagine must be extremely traumatic and life changing experience. But there's a little bit of method to my madness as I will explain in the end.

According to a study by Dr Rudolph Zinn written in order to expose the shocking reality of house robberies in south Africa, there are 15 000 house break-ins a year in the country. Now one crime you can be sure is not under reported are housebreaks in. They simple must be reported in order to do an insurance claim (a good deal possible fraudulent.)

You're welcome to read DR Zinns full report but be careful you don't come across a site that is trying to cherry pic some parts to make their story more interesting while ignoring others. Read the entire report in context.

First some interesting side notes.

Of these half occur in Gauteng.
The areas mostly affected are black areas.
Robbers come from all races but share the common trait of being poor.
17% of the robbers are foreigners.
When people are at home during the robbery 2% of the time someone is injured.

Now if we assume that people are at home every single time that would mean 300 people injured(or indeed murdered) a year. Of course this is the exception rather than the rule and robberies are far more likely to occur when people are not at home. But if you're ever unlucky enough to have someone invade your home, a calm rational response should see you through and you're more likely to be calm and rational and not do something stupid if you are in possession of the facts.

So if it is at most 300 people who are injured or murdered by house robberies and half of these happen in Gauteng and black areas, as a white person (and I never pretend that's who I'm talking to when I write this blog) I hope that let's you sleep a lot better. Remember it's could be closer to 1 in 10 robberies happening while people are at home and it brings this number down to 30.

Which it goes without saying is 30 too many.

Peace and Love
Rooster





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