South Africa is once again gripped by fear. In recent weeks, the bodies of multiple women have been discovered in and around Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg. The victims were bruised, partially undressed, and showed signs of sexual assault. These similarities have prompted police warnings, public panic, and widespread speculation about a possible serial killer.
Whether a single perpetrator is responsible or not, the horror is real and the pattern is familiar. Women cannot jog or walk alone without risking their lives. Children are murdered daily. Rape is reported every few minutes. Murder conviction rates remain abysmally low. This is not an isolated outrage; rather, it is the normalized reality of a country that has long treated violent crime as background noise.
In such moments, the instinct is to demand more police, more raids, and greater toughness. This instinct is understandable, yet it is also incomplete. The state’s capacity is finite, and its resources are limited.
While communities mourn the latest victims of brutality, police and prosecutors continue to expend scarce resources on activities that harm no one: enforcing regulatory offenses, pursuing non-payment of licenses, policing vices, and criminalizing peaceful, voluntary conduct. This is not justice; it is a misallocation of resources that allows violent offenders greater freedom to operate.
The Free Market Foundation’s Section 12 initiative confronts this reality head-on. Named after Section 12 of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom and security of the person, including the right to be free from all forms of violence from both public and private sources, the initiative insists that the state’s core duty is to protect life, liberty, and property. Everything else is secondary, and much of it is actively harmful.
Violent crime has been out of control for decades. Approximately 80 to 90 people are murdered every day. Rape occurs at a rate that should shame any society that claims to value human dignity. Yet, the criminal justice system is overloaded with offenses that do not involve aggression against persons or property.
Overcriminalization dilutes focus and ultimately wastes scarce resources. When the law treats a backyard trader who fails to meet some bureaucratic standard, a citizen who refuses to pay a television license, or a smoker in their own home as if they belong in the same category as a murderer or rapist, the moral and practical distinction between genuine crime and state-created offenses collapses.
Prisons ultimately become filled with individuals who should not be incarcerated. Detectives and prosecutors, who could be concentrating on crimes that harm people and their property, are diverted. Meanwhile, the public loses confidence that the system prioritizes protecting the innocent.
Section 12’s solutions are both principled and practical. First, it is essential to accurately define the scope of criminal law. Offences should be codified so that every South African can understand, without specialist knowledge of obscure statutes and regulations, what precisely constitutes a crime. The FMF has drafted a Criminal Code Bill for this purpose. Clarity is the foundation of accountability, and no society can genuinely claim to uphold justice if the means of achieving it, as set out in its laws, are obscure to the wider public.
Another solution is to develop genuine capacity in policing, prosecution, and prisons, focusing on violence and theft rather than on regulatory restrictions that cause no direct harm to individuals or their property.
Decentralisation is another key aspect of the Section 12 initiative’s solutions. We need to empower provinces, municipalities, communities, and private enterprises to contribute to safety, rather than relying solely on a distant, overburdened national apparatus.
Most importantly, we must decriminalise conduct in which peaceful individuals and enterprises engage voluntarily. Vices are not crimes. Harm to oneself is not the same as harm to others. It must be made clear that the state may, and indeed must, justly respond to aggression; however, it has no business using force against non-aggressive actions or choices.
This is not an endorsement of ignoring crime; it is quite the opposite. By removing the distractions of victimless offences, the system can focus its limited resources on those who truly destroy lives by harming others: the murderers, rapists, and serial predators who currently operate with a disturbingly high degree of freedom.
When the police are not pursuing informal traders or minor regulatory offences, they can focus on chasing killers. When prison beds are not occupied by those whose only offence is non-compliance with some administrative decree, space becomes available for those who have committed real acts of violence. When the law is applied to genuine wrongs, the public can once again trust that justice means protecting the innocent rather than being an empty phrase.
Some who oppose the idea of removing offences such as drug use may claim that any discussion of decriminalisation would undermine “tough” policing. However, they would be missing the point. South Africa has pursued toughness without focus for years. The result is the body count we now face in Ekurhuleni and across the country.
A state that attempts to be everything ultimately becomes effective at nothing. Limited government is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is the prerequisite for competence in the one domain where the use of force is legitimate and justified: the protection of individuals and their property.
The current wave of fear should not result in another cycle of temporary outrage followed by forgetfulness. Instead, it must prompt a fundamental reorientation. Politicians should be pressured by all means to place violent crime at the centre of their agenda. Ordinary South Africans must insist that the criminal law cease treating peaceful citizens as suspects and begin treating aggressors as the primary threat.
The Section 12 Initiative offers a principled, coherent framework for that shift. It does not promise overnight miracles. It demands greater meaning and rigour. A clarity about the purpose of the state, and the discipline to stop using it for everything else. In a country where the daily murder toll barely registers as news, such clarity is not an academic luxury; it is, tragically, a matter of life and death.
Until we reserve the coercive power of the state solely for those who genuinely harm others, the fears currently gripping communities will persist and become normalised, just as we have come to accept the fear of never leaving our doors unlocked, holding our phones in public, or driving with our windows down at night, among many other safety measures we must rightfully take in a dangerous country such as ours.
Zakhele Mthembu, BA Law LLB (Wits), is Policy Officer at the Free Market Foundation.