[Don’t be fooled by this title, this is an shocking article. Barbara Simpson has travelled to S.Africa many times and she was here recently. So she knows, first-hand what she is writing about. She is one of the very few out there who are telling it as it is. Jan]

If you were to believe the picture presented by the media, you would think South Africa is a political, economic, cultural and social utopia. After all, the media picture goes, apartheid is gone, Nelson Mandela is free, blacks are in charge and all’s well. Things are as they should be.

Well, not exactly. In fact, things in that physically beautiful and natural-resource rich country are pretty rocky, but so much is at stake in preserving the image of order and peace that the realities are ignored on the world stage, especially in the United States.

But there may be a crack in the veneer with a report in the Los Angeles Times last weekend concerning an attempted rape, which resulted in charges of police violence and a near riot. At the heart of the incident lies a reservoir of discord and official malfeasance.

The National Basketball Association took 450 orphans, aged 8-18, on a beach holiday to Durban. They were from the Ithuteng Trust, a charity recently awarded a $1-million sponsorship by Oprah Winfrey.

Near a restroom, four girls were threatened with rape by four men armed with knives “ when the girls fought back, they were knifed. Other orphans chased them, catching one who was taken to the police.

Chaos ensued. Apparently the police refused to arrest the man, saying the orphans didn’t speak the local Zulu language, used tear gas on the orphans, beat 20, sent 95 to the hospital and kicked their supervisor.

It might have ended there except the supervisor called the wife of President Thabo Mbeki and got the phone numbers of local politicians.

The incident is another of the investigations of South African police for varied charges of mistreatment, beatings, disruptions of demonstrations, immigrant harassment, and for ignoring rampant rape and violent crime.

I was recently in South Africa and reading the daily newspapers illustrated a shocking array of rampant crime.

South Africa is flooded with refugees from the Mugabe dictatorship in neighboring Zimbabwe, but those same people are frequently victims of South African police.

In August, a group of pastors from the Zimbabwe National Pastors Council visited South Africa and called the police treatment of Zimbabweans refugees “shameful.”

After visiting the Lindela Refuge Repatriation Center “ where two people, including a pregnant teen, died in July “ they called the facility a “psychological torture chamber” and a “concentration camp.” They revealed stories of police sexual harassment of arrested female Zimbabwean illegal immigrants. They said the deportation process is failed and many refugees are forced into prostitution to survive.

After the publicity, Roy Naidoo, Gauteng police commissioner, promised all people, including arrested Zimbabwean immigrants, would be “treated as human beings regardless of status.”

Crime? One way of handling it was to have a “special remission of sentence” “ essentially, releasing prisoners who were supposedly non-violent. Since June, nearly 31,000 prisoners and 34,000 parolees and probationers were released.

One was a pedophile who’d been convicted of raping a 3-year-old and previously had sodomized a 9-year-old boy. Officials said he’d served his sentence and there was nothing more they could do.

In one instance, 131 prisoners were released and “ within 10 weeks “ all 131 were back in jail. Officials said they planned to interview them to “see where did it go wrong.”

There were more prisoners in jail after the remissions than before.

Crime in South Africa is rampant, heavily black on white, but also growing violence “ extremely vicious violence “ of black on black. The news, more than chilling, is reported in South Africa each day, but ignored in the United States.

South Africa is not known as the child rape capitol of the world for nothing.

Here are 16 days of news reports. I gave up after that!

The body of a 12-year-old girl found in a river, in a burlap bag filled with rocks.

A 3-year-old girl hacked to death by her uncle, pieces of her flesh cut off, roasted and eaten. This has happened before.

A 30-year-old man arrested for raping his 6-year-old niece.

A 5-year-old girl raped and strangled. The mother’s boyfriend sought “ he’d disappeared.

A young teenager raped by her stepbrother.

A 7-year-old girl, home after school, was tied up by an intruder and thrown out the second floor window, killing her.

A 5-year-old girl disappeared from her home and was found dead 19 days later “ acid had been poured on her face.

A trial was ongoing concerning the mistreatment of a child by parents who called her an “evil demon.” The child was tied up and left outdoors with a dog. A psychologist defended the parents and said the family advocate was overreacting. The father said, “We love her. We could have had her adopted or murdered her. But we felt like not doing that.” Despite the horrific treatment, the court ruled that a second child “ a month-old boy “ should remain with the parents “in the best interests of the child.”

Another trial concerned the serial rape by two men of two, 17-year-old girls and the murder of one, at a school dance. The District Attorney reports that in 2003-04, out of 15,857 child rapes reported, 9,189 (57.95 percent) went to court, resulting in 721 convictions (4.55 percent). DA MP Mike Waters said that “… nearly half the convictions came from repeat offenders.”

Two criminals robbed a 19-year-old man and gouged his eyes out so they couldn’t be identified. A few days later, the chairman of the Policing Forum, investigating the crime, was shot three times in the head and killed.

A staffer at the Durban Country Club and father of five was mugged on his way to work, shot and killed. They thought he had a gun; he didn’t.

A young man was hijacked, stabbed in the face, chest and back, dragged behind a vehicle and hanged.

All the victims above were black.

A white farmer, returning home from soccer practice with his three sons, was killed in his own driveway. Two men shot him five times, twice in the head, twice in the chest and once in the arm. Nothing was stolen. The children saw the killing. Possible motive? The man was a key witness in an armed-robbery case.

A secondary school teacher was found strangled, in his own home “ his Mercedes was stolen.

Two women and two children were dragged from their beds and held prisoner in their home by six intruders. One woman was raped and household goods, cash, bankcards and PIN numbers stolen. Police warned residents of a surge in night burglaries.

A jealous man shot his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach five times and once in the leg because he didn’t believe he was the child’s father.

The trial of the abductor and killer of a woman was disrupted by fears of witchcraft.

A man in a wheelchair pulled out an AK-47 and, with six accomplices, robbed a payroll facility.

A security guard was shot by three suspects during the robbery of payroll cash boxes. Police say such crimes are increasing 13 percent a year.

Crimes against religious leaders are increasing, ministers robbed at gunpoint, church offices robbed, pastors assaulted. Criminals are masked and armed.

A saleswoman, on a test drive with a potential customer, was informed by the man he was “a hijacker.” The armed man, took her cell phone, bankcards and identification, pushed her out of the car and drove away.

A Durban businessman was kidnapped, robbed, tied up and kept in a car trunk for 72 hours. Seven men were arrested and charged with kidnapping, attempted murder, robbery and aggravated circumstances. He survived.

Another was not so lucky “ despite attempts to pay the ransom, he was murdered. Police say ransom kidnappings are the “biggest growth sector in the South African crime business.” The public doesn’t know because few are reported to police and those that are, aren’t reported to the media. Police also say theft from cars is rampant. Unlocked parked cars are targets, as well as moving vehicles with lone drivers, unlocked doors and vehicles in slow traffic, particularly at intersections.

One man surprised the criminals who followed his car and then crashed into him. They pulled a gun on him, but were surprised when he retaliated by pointing his own gun at them. They took off “ he chased them.

A woman, walking home with friends from a movie, felt hands on her and a necklace ripped off. She said a police van was passing, but nothing was done.

A gardener returning home from work was set upon by teens who threatened him with knives. He might have died but for an elderly man who scared off the thugs with a gun. He said “Thank God that man had a gun.”

It’s possible to own a gun in South Africa, but it isn’t easy. You must pass the proficiency test at an accredited school, go to the police department firearm officer to apply for a competency certificate, apply for a license giving the reason you need the weapon, be fingerprinted, submit color photos, pay the fee, arrange for an inspection of your safe or strongroom, which must meet standards.

If all this is done and accepted, you’ll get the certificate and the license, valid for five years, when you’ll go through the same procedure again.

Don’t hold your breath.

With or without a gun, your property should be walled, have an electric fence, security gates and garage doors, motion detectors, lights, windows and doors with bars and locks, alarm systems, interior safe rooms, a good watchdog, and no thick shrubbery.

South Africa is on the verge of change. Crime is increasing as is the violence. Despite foreign aid, investment and trade, unemployment and underemployment is widespread. The spread of Islam is very evident, as is inflammatory rhetoric from some mosques. The government of Mbeki is rocked by scandals of favoritism, and the reports of mismanagement and theft are shocking. Government policies of land redistribution are raising questions, as is support for the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.

What will happen when Mandela dies? Who will replace Mbeki? What does the future hold for whites and white investment in that country? What of the future of the millions of poor blacks and the millions more of illegals who have escaped the horrors of their own countries?

What happens in South Africa “ the most stable country on that continent “ will affect all of us. Don’t ignore it.

Source: Daily Mail & Guardian
URL: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ART…/p>