THENEWSOUTHAFRICA
population, more than fourteen million people, were under twenty years
old. Many of these young people were raised in families with high rates of
divorce, teenage pregnancy, and children born outside of marriage. With
that background,
millions of youths were socialized in lawless gangs,
which contributed
to the rampant crime that was a hallmark of the so-
ciery.?
South Africa was an exceptionally violent society. Whereas in previous
generations Whites had a near monopoly
of firearms, -by 1994 South
Africans of all races owned modern weapons, including AK-47assault ri-
fles, most of which, like the illegal immigrants, came from Mozambique.f
According to the South African Institute of Race Relations, the annual
murder rate per one hundred thousand people in 1990-91
was four in
France and Germany, ten in the United States, and fifteen in the Nether-
lands. In South Africa it was ninety-eight. South Africa was also the un-
challenged leader in the rates of rape and serious assault." Cape Town and
Johannesburg
vied for the title of murder capital of the world. In 1994,
Tony Leon, the leader of the Democratic party, asserted that in Cape Town
only one in ten murderers was caught and that only one in a hundred of
those who were caught went to trial. Throughout