On Crime, Safety and Fairness

I was approached recently by a home security company about having my street patrolled for 12 hours daily at “a reasonable cost for peace of mind”.


Peace of mind cannot be bought. And guards, dogs and cameras cannot provide security. For some, I expect that they do provide “peace of mind” – for a while.


Guards, dogs and cameras do provide a cue: only valuable things need protecting and valuable things are worth stealing, particularly because there are willing buyers. And so the circle goes.


I ask myself continually how these cycles can be disrupted, countered, destroyed and always I come to this same conclusion: I need only do the right thing. Only me, not everyone else and not all the time, but only as often as I can manage it. It is a simple thing. And it is so incredibly difficult – not in the conception of it or even in the doing of it from time to time but in the additional requirement of constancy.


To do the right thing.


I am not selfless, I am not extraordinary and I am no hero. Life is a struggle and I have lost my illusions of control. I have not lost my anger.


I have an unremarkable anger: ordinary, because I have learned that all South Africans have it: it is formless and without a target, without a clear cause excepting a marrow-in-the-bone sense of injustice. Some blame apartheid and Bantu education, but it is an anger that cuts across race and social strata. I have no doubt that you have it.


I have it despite my education, my material comfort and my loving family. I have been a victim of crime several times and of ingratitude that hurt and angered as much and yet that is still not sufficient reason because I had it before and after.


The poor have it too. The hungry, ignorant poor have it in abundance shielded by a moral righteousness. My anger has no shield, my relative privilege leaving me without the moral high ground and yet it persists. I cannot blame the poor for their poverty as I cannot blame the sick for their debility. I have not caused the problems, but I find myself labouring under a presumed obligation to fix what I did not break.


I did not suffer? I did not cause the suffering!


A friend speaking plainly said that the world did not owe me a living. He was right.


Life is not only about obligation. We are built to be fair and nothing cuts as acutely as the accusation of unfairness, but fairness is not enough, our humanity, our sympathy is bound up in generosity.


We need to gift. Not charity, which creates a barrier between the receiver and the giver. We need to extend our circles of friends through gifting – little things will do as well as great because it is the exchanges that matter: they show that we care and they free us of the burden of fixing that which we didn’t break.


Only in our caring – our visible caring – can there be peace of mind because only in our caring can we demonstrate equity. The poor are oppressed by their poverty, but they blame the “rich” because there are few connections between them and so, little evidence of caring.


To be a good husband or wife is the same as being a good parent or neighbour. And it is the same as being a good friend. It is caring, visibly. It is many little things, often. We are so often disastrously misunderstood by those closest and dearest to us and yet our relationships endure because we care. How much greater the misunderstandings across culture and race? How intractable in the perceived lack of caring?


Necessity is the mother of invention and there is no greater necessity than self-preservation. I know without doubt that if my talents and opportunities had not been enough for survival, I would have been a criminal – there, but for the grace of God, go I.


Without equity, without caring, there can be no security, no peace of mind.

[Letter to the Editor, Daily Newspaper in South Africa, Oct 2003]