A different sort of anti-crime association has emerged in downtown Johannesburg. The Central Johannesburg Partnership, a nonprofit corporation formed by business owners, provides "private urban management services" in four downtown areas totaling 50 blocks, or 10 percent of the inner city. The services include security, street cleaning, vending management, and miscellaneous maintenance tasks, such as painting light poles and electric boxes. Operating with a yearly budget of about $1 million funded by contributions from the businesses it serves, the CJP employs about 100 security guards and 30 street cleaners, with a office staff of six.
The first area managed by the CJP was the Central Improvement District, created in late 1993. In 1992 that area averaged 27 muggings a month; in all of 1997, by contrast, it had only three. Most of the people who live and work in this neighborhood are black; many are middle class, but a significant number are quite poor. The CJP's professional services contrast sharply with the protection available in many black townships, where residents have almost no confidence in the police and routinely take the law into their own hands, administering "street justice" with beatings.
CJP Chairman Neil Frasier says he doesn't have crime statistics for areas of Johannesburg outside the organization's coverage, but he is confident that "we are significantly lower." Almost every category of crime has dropped in the Central Improvement District: Armed robberies in 1997 were down 63 percent from the year before, muggings were down 73 percent, and pickpocketing was down 80 percent.
Frasier says the key to inner-city crime prevention is "the highly visible presence of security." The CJP guards all have uniforms; to increase their visibility, they wear yellow hats, belts, and arm bands. During the first six months of 1998, they arrested more than 200 people for crimes ranging from armed robbery to hijacking and turned them over to the police.
In one of the more spectacular arrests, CJP guards heard gunfire and rushed to intervene in a gang attack on an armored vehicle carrying cash. The attackers fled, but the guards pursued them. Three suspects were arrested and a fourth refused to surrender, shooting himself in the head.
Sheri Lambert, who works in the Central Improvement District, says "one gets to know the individual guards on one's usual `beat' going from parking to work in the morning and evening." Manny Da Rocha, of Quenchers Pub & Grub, found that this personal touch makes a big difference. Last year, he recalls, the security guard for his building (not a CJP employee) "enlightened me that my vehicle, driven by a stranger, was moving down the street." Da Rocha ran outside and saw one of the CJP guards "jumping into the vehicle, causing the driver to flee in fright to another vehicle waiting closeby." The CJP guard "informed me that he knew my vehicle and when he saw a stranger behind the wheel, he realized it was being stolen."
If only South Africa's politicians reacted as swiftly and effectively to crime.
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