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Mandela Calls on Government to Ensure Security for All
Former South African president Nelson Mandela said December 3 the government should be committed to creating a society where there is safety and security for all.
"The state should protect its citizens," he said at the opening of the 14th conference of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law under the theme of "Human Rights and the Administration of Criminal Justice".
The levels of crime remain unnecessarily high in the country and the poor remain the most vulnerable who suffer the most, Mandela said.
Mandela said until 1994, 80 percent of the country's security forces were deployed in white areas, but in the new constitution the position changed as criminals "moved to white areas to carry on a series of criminal activities which the black areas were used to".
"For the first time in history the whites in this country now know how the blacks lived in the past," he said.
"The administration of criminal law was from the beginning of the Union of South Africa perverted by the underlying racial assumptions of dominant society and of the political order," he said.
Mandela said however that he does not welcome the escalating crime in predominantly white neighborhoods.
Referring to mounting corruption in the country, Mandela said corruption in the government is rife and that it is not only an inheritance of the apartheid era.
"Not only did we inherit corruption from the apartheid regime, but also from our own freedom fighters. Little did we know about our own people. When they (freedom fighters) get a chance, they would be just as corrupt as the apartheid civil service," Mandela said.
"The difference is that we did not sweep it under the carpet -- we appointed a judge (to investigate)," he said.
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