Sudden death enters the leafy suburbs

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A WHITE family celebrating the father's birthday is interrupted by

three black men, armed, predictably, with an AK-47, a pistol and a

knife. Within half-an-hour the intruders have fled in the family car,

taking money, jewellery and electronic equipment with them and leaving a

dead bulldog and three wounded members of the family in their wake.

The mother, Bridget Primrose, has stab wounds in her arm, a robber

having repeatedly stuck a knife into her as agitately he instructed her

to activate the demobiliser on the car.

The father, Ray Primrose, and his 12-year-old son, Clive, lie wounded

on the floor, having been hit in the fusillade of bullets fired by the

robbers when the dog attacked them.

The experience of the Primose family is becoming commonplace. South

Africa, with a homicide rate of 50 per 100,000 people, has become one of

the most violent countries in the world.

To live in South Africa's densely populated black townships is to live

with the prospect of sudden death, the Commonwealth Observer Mission in

South Africa notes in its recent report.

A corollary must, however, be added: the violence which has plagued

township residents for decades has begun to ooze into white-controlled

towns and cities.

The new trend is manifest in the gunning-down of restaurant owners,

the slaying of elderly people, the rape of women, the hijacking at

gunpoint of luxury cars and, sometimes, the calculated murder of the

owners of hijacked vehicles to prevent them from identifying their

assailants.

The more sophisticated whites -- nearly all of whom live behind bars

and many of whom own guns -- talk jocularly of the ''informal

redistribution system'' when they describe burglaries and robberies.

Their jocularity masks nervousness.

The seepage of violence from black township to white town, from dusty

ghetto to leafy suburb, underlines the aphorism that security, like

freedom, is indivisible. To quote the memorable phrase of the Afrikaner

mogul, Anton Rupert: ''If they don't eat we can't sleep.''

Violence in South Africa takes two theoretical forms, political and

criminal. The distinction often breaks down: political zealots who use

their guns to conduct heists for personal gain are indistinguishable

from criminals; bandits who buy AK-47s from guerrillas and pick up a bit

of ideology sometimes assume a political identity.

The point is graphically illustrated in figures quoted by the Minister

of Law and Order, Hernus Kriel; since March last year more than 50

members of the African National Congress and its armed wing, Umkhonto we

Sizwe, have been arrested for robbery and an other 26 for murder.

In so far as the distinction between criminal and political violence

is valid, a broad assertion can be made: political violence usually

attracts more attention in the media -- one thinks of the Boipatong

massacre last June or the pitiless murder of six black schoolchildren in

Natal province late last month -- but criminal violence has more

destructive impact on the lives of South Africans, black and white.

Last year between 3100 and 3500 people died in political violence, the

vast majority of them black; over the same period between 15,775 and

19,000 people were murdered in criminal violence.

A central conclusion is irresistible: ordinary criminal violence is

statistically more significant by a magnitude of between four and six. A

second conclusion follows: criminal violence will not necessarily be

reduced in the short term by a political settlement.

It is tempting, particularly in relation to political violence, to

look for a single underlying cause; ''apartheid'' and a state-directed

''third force'' are two favourites of reductionists.

But the causes of South Africa's violence are, in the words of Judge

Richard Goldstone, ''many and complicated''. They include as a factor --

but not the factor -- the machinations and prejudices of security forces

officers. The sacking or suspension of 23 military officers and their

civilian collaborators after Goldstone's exposure last year of the

Director for Covert Collections is obviously pertinent.

Impoverishment (the economy has contracted for the past three years)

and unemployment (40% of South Africa's economically active population

lack formal employment) are major causes of violence. They combine with

the breakdown of education in many black townships to generate a

criminal class.

Political rivalry is another key cause. Goldstone, a respected jurist

who has sharply criticised the security forces on several occasions,

identifies political rivalry as the primary cause of violence in six of

South Africa's most strife-torn areas.

The rivalry to which he refers is between Nelson Mandela's African

National Congress and Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party

(IFP). ''Only the IFP and the ANC have the power effectively to curb the

violence and intimidation being perpetrated by their respective

supporters,'' Goldstone says.

Criminal violence fuels political strife by diverting the undermanned

police force from fulfilling its role of forestalling violence between

rival political forces. The reverse applies equally: criminal violence

compounds the difficulties of dealing with political violence.

The task of the police is compounded by another factor: the perception

in the black community of them as perpetrators of violence rather than

keepers of the peace.

The breakdown of authority during the transition from the old order to

the new -- and, according to an increasing number of South Africans, the

moratorium on the death penalty -- have contributed to the burgeoning of

crime.

Opinion polls, however, show that the majority of blacks, as the main

victims of violence, want peaceful settlement, not intensified violence.