Op-ed: Fighting crime or using immigrants as scapegoats?

2 October 2015

Crime is a thing in South Africa. A big thing. It shapes where we live, how we work, and to whom we talk. Those committed to a more equitable, free and prosperous society must applaud any effort to make the country’s residents safer and more secure. For this very reason, we should feel deep unease at the police minister and police commissioner’s recent statements to Parliament regarding safety and criminality. Yet it’s hard to know what about the police officials’ statements should worry us more. Is it that they willfully misled the public and politicians about immigrants’ role in crime based on faulty, biased statistics? Or is that that the officials responsible for our safety honestly believe this is what their statistics tell them?

Read the article here