The safety and security minister, Charles Nqakula, says he is not lying awake at night worrying about the 2010 Soccer World Cup. ‘We know where people are going to stay, what routes they are going to take, and which stadiums they are going to.’ The police will no doubt do an excellent job in keeping these areas safe, presumably in part by redeploying officers from elsewhere for the duration of the tournament. Criminals will presumably redeploy themselves accordingly. Not for the first time, the impression is created that the safety of visitors to the country is of more concern to the authorities than that of South Africans.

On this and other aspects of public security this column has frequently been critical of both the police and their political superiors. It’s nice then to be somewhat complimentary for once - about the recent report on crime published by the South African Police Service. There is little in the report to convince anyone that the police or their minister are capable of making South Africa safe. The document’s importance is that it is a contribution, however belated, to public debate. We were once told that the police had better things to do than lick pens to compile statistics. Now we have plenty of new figures, plus analysis thereof. Publication of the document is a sign that public concern about crime, so often trivialised or disdainfully dismissed, is perhaps, at long last, beginning to be being taken seriously, maybe.

The police thus recognise that house robbery has gone up by ‘an alarming 23.7%’, and that this and other forms of aggravated robbery are ‘responsible for perceptions that one cannot even sleep safely in one’s own bed and further that a considerable risk exists of being hurt, maimed, or killed in one’s own bedroom’. This is quite an admission for the police to have to make. Now that it has been made, nobody in government can again suggest that anyone voicing concern about crime should stop whingeing and just get the hell out of the country.

Nor are house robberies a suburban phenomenon. The reports lists 12 townships – defined as ‘built-up residential areas still predominantly (+95%) inhabited by black people’ - as among the top 32 locations of such robberies. It also states that ‘by far the majority’ of murders, rapes, and serious assaults occur in ‘predominantly black megatownships in South Africa’s metropolitan areas [which] usually include large and growing informal settlements (squatter areas).’ This data should finally put an end to attempts by some in authority to stigmatise concern about crime as motivated by white racism.

If the figures given in the report are compared with those of 1994/1995, there has in fact been a drop in the overall crime rate (crimes per 100 000 of population) of 14%. On the other hand there has been a 5% increase in the number of serious crimes committed over that twelve-year period. More recently – assuming the figures are correct - there has been reason to believe that murder and aggravated robbery were on the way down after reaching a very high plateau. Any resulting optimism now seems to have been misplaced. Though the one-year increase in the number of murders in the latest report may be a hiccup in the downward trend, armed robberies at homes and businesses have increased for the second year in a row, while cash-in-transit and bank robberies have both risen for three successive years.

The report puts forward all sorts of arguments about the causes of various types of crime. If it is correct in its claim that informal settlements are ‘extremely difficult areas to police’, then a means of policing them will have to be found because these settlements are likely to keep growing apace.

Though the police concede that much of their analysis lacks an empirical basis, their willingness to put forward their arguments is a step towards building the public trust so essential to the fight against crime. But many other steps are needed too. Among them is an independent analysis of the SAPS itself, as this column has previously mooted. These latest figures suggest that all the recent promises of new strategies, clampdowns, zero tolerance etc, against crime have had minimal impact. What is now needed is a public commission of enquiry into the police force and their methods, with a six-month reporting deadline.