Player’s death highlights violence in South Africa before election

In the South African town where Luke Fleurs grew up, some of his friends joined gangs before they reached high school, but Luke found another way: he was so brilliant at football that he became a professional player for South Africa’s top club. .

Fleurs’ success story ended abruptly last month when he was killed at a Johannesburg gas station by someone who stole his car.

The murder of 24-year-old Fleurs not only caused public sadness due to his fame as a Kaizer Chiefs defender, but also highlighted the crime problem in South Africa. The country has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with an average of 75 murders per day.

Elections

Voter frustration with the government’s inability to curb rising crime rates is one of the reasons why the ruling African National Congress party is expected to lose its majority in Parliament in elections on May 29 after 30 years in power.

“We gave our blessing for him to move to Johannesburg to escape the violence and gangs in his homeland, but he ended up dying at the height of his promising football career,” Luke’s father, Theo Fleurs, said in an interview to Reuters.

With 45 murders per 100,000 inhabitants between 2022 and 2023, South Africa’s homicide rate was the highest in the last 20 years, according to police data, almost equivalent to that of Ecuador and higher than that of Honduras, a country plagued by extreme gang violence.

High levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality have created fertile ground for crime to take root in South Africa, worsened by the proliferation of organized criminal groups and a flood of illegal weapons in recent years, according to analysts.

Policing

The state’s approach, largely focused on recruiting more police officers, has changed little since the 1990s, said David Bruce, a policing consultant at the Institute for Security Studies.

“The South African policing system needs to adapt to a new world,” Bruce said.

The ruling party’s election manifesto says it will modernize policing, develop capabilities to combat cybercrime and gang violence, and implement a data-driven approach, among other measures.

Impunity

The proportion of homicide cases solved has decreased. Between 2022 and 2023, there were 27,494 murders and 2,982 convictions, according to government data.

“Basically, one in ten homicides is solved by the police,” said Ziyanda Stuurman, an analyst at Eurasia Group who wrote a book about policing in South Africa.

“There is a general belief that you can get away with murdering someone and never get caught.”