South Africa at a loss over killing sprees

Trying to quell violence ahead of 2010 World Cup

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Watch your back in South Africa. They kill folks here. Murder them at a bewildering rate.

Robbers kill their victims, bystanders kill criminals, family members kill each other.

Gun battles erupt on streets and in shopping malls. Passers-by whip out pistols and join in firefights between criminals and police or security guards. A recent flurry in high-profile bloodshed even has police suggesting they are losing the fight with violent crime.

Plans for South Africa to host soccer's next World Cup, in 2010, have focused international attention on the crime rate, with organizers having to answer questions not just about whether they'll have enough stadiums and hotel rooms, but whether the 350,000 foreign visitors expected for the monthlong tournament will be safe.

Statistically, a South African is 12 times as likely to be murdered as the average American, and his chances of being killed are 50 times greater than if he lived in western Europe.

''This is an extraordinarily violent society, and nobody understands it,'' said Peter Gastrow, a crime analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Cape Town.

There are plenty of theories, many tied to South Africa's unique history and the belief that the struggle against apartheid created a culture of lawlessness, Gastrow said.

''The reasons seem to be unbelievably complex. There is no explanation that makes sense. The million-dollar question is, 'Why?' If we could understand that, we could start to fix it. But we can't,'' he said.

The government contends it has made progress, reducing some types of crime and leveling off others. Still, after recent highly publicized cases, including the deaths of 17 people in just two incidents in June and July, the government had to promise a much tougher stance, saying police will be much more aggressive.

At the same time, the government tries to reduce attention paid to crime by having police release crime statistics only once a year.

The last statistics available showed that between April 2004 and March 2005, a total of 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa, an average of 51 a day in a nation of 47 million.

South Africans, especially whites, are among the best-armed citizens on Earth.

There are approximately 4.5 million registered firearms in the country, including more than 2.8 million handguns. The government estimates there also are 500,000 to a million unregistered firearms.

Gun Free South Africa, a private gun-control advocacy group, says more people are shot and killed in South Africa than die in car accidents.

Under apartheid, it was easy for whites to buy firearms. But since the end of apartheid in 1994, the government has tried to tighten controls. Parliament approved a system of phased controls, setting deadlines for various steps in making gun ownership increasingly difficult.

But Gastrow said bureaucratic delays and entanglements have pushed back all of the deadlines to the point of being meaningless.

In Johannesburg in June, cops and robbers shot it out for hours in what has become known as ''the Jeppestown massacre.'' The gunmen killed four captured policemen, riddling their bodies with bullets. Two of the officers, knowing the end was near, died together, embracing each other as they were repeatedly shot. Eleven suspects were killed.

The minister for safety and security, Charles Nqakula, provided a blemish for the government's public relations effort when he suggested that people who complain about crime should just leave the country.

He spoke shortly before the Jeppestown massacre. After that, a shaken Nqakula publicly urged police officers to ''use firearms to defend yourself and the lives of all peace-loving South Africans.''

AP