WITHIN THE SOCIAL WORK PROFESSION
4.1 Introduction
4.2.3 Crime and Violence
facing social workers impact considerably on how they experience their work as social workers.
Finally, like the majority of people in South Africa, social workers have been socialised into bureaucratic and patriarchal structures, and the experience of apartheid stifled participation and decision-making (Sewpaul, 1992). Social workers working in poverty-stricken communities at times feel the same hopelessness and despair as their clients and need, through a process of reflection, to understand their own sense of where they have come from and where they are going.
Police, justice officials, social workers, neighbourhood watches, community forums, and non-governmental organisations all point fingers at one another, passing blame for what is seen as the rot of South Africa (Shapiro, cited, in Gray, 1998: 151). Endless commissions and committees sit in an attempt to plan effective change while drug lords, syndicates, gang leaders and individual offenders increase their grip on an already anxious nation. Crime in South Africa seriously hampers development (Gray, 1998). Like most transitions, the new dispensation has brought with it a time of instability. As soon as the citizens of South Africa had won back the right to be treated with respect and dignity, crime was seen to threaten the stability of the country. There is little doubt that crime is of major concern to most South Africans. The perception that crime in South Africa is out of control, whether real or fuelled by the media, is having a detrimental effect on economic and social development. Apart from assisting in addressing poverty and equalising power relations, social work has a more specific role to play in these crime-ridden communities and in changing the culture of crime in South Africa.
The question is whether social workers are ready for this challenge and are equipped to deal with this role effectively, either on a professional or personal level.
Besides poverty and crime, one of the single most important social issues facing social workers in South Africa today is that of violence. According to Letsebe (1995), violence is virtually an accepted part of everyday life in South Africa. Gray (1998: 267) claims that social workers are constantly confronted with the harsh reality of an increase in violence against women and children. It is estimated that in South Africa a woman is raped every three minutes. Gray (1998) quotes the occurrence of rape in South Africa at a million a year but, in reality, the figure is unknown since it is a punishable offence which carries a stigma for victims and is therefore often concealed or not reported. Gray (1998:267) quotes from an article
in the Daily News (11 April, 1997): " ... so rife is the problem that it has been said that rape has become a national sport in South Africa". This has led to public outcry demanding better responses, more favourable to women, from the criminal justice system. In addition there has been an alarming increase in domestic violence and a greater public awareness of the frequency of this behaviour.
According to Van Niekerk (1998), the fundamental problem of South African society has always been a problem of values. Van Niekerk (1998) claims that crime; violence and corruption are identified as the main indicators of the demise of important, basic, societal values. Facts and figures usually referred to include the following, as quoted by Van Niekerk (1998:62 -63):
• South Africa has the highest rate of rapes in the world. According to official figures, 142 people are raped daily in South Africa; that is:
51 830 per year (an average of 5,9 rapes per hour of every day of the year). Rapes and attempted rapes increased from 47 506 in 1995 to 51 830 in 1998 (Bigalke, cited in Niekerk, 1998:62).
• Apart from rape, other crimes of violence such as armed robbery, murder, gang wars, taxi violence, assault and car hijackings are clearly out of control. According to official figures, an average of 67 people per day was murdered in 1998 and another 37 per day died as a result of acts of culpable homicide (Bigalke, cited in Niekerk, 1998:62).
• Further, official statistics show that in 1997, 642 people per day were victims of assault with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm, a rise of 13 564 compared to the 1995 figure. An average of 190 armed robberies per day took place over the same period (almost eight per hour). An average of 36 people per day was victims of car hijackings (Bigalke, cited in Niekerk, 1998:63).
These facts and figures have increased substantially over the years, and it is clear that we are facing a serious crisis of values in South Africa.
McKendrick and Hoffman (1990:3) claim that in South Africa violence emerged as a consequence of the struggle around the erstwhile socio- political system, apartheid, and its legacy. Lauer cited in McKendrick and Hoffmann (1990:3), regard violence as the use of force to harm, injure, or abuse others on a personal or on an inter-group level. In inter-group situations, the violence usually involves confrontation between individuals themselves, individuals behaving violently because of their group affiliation rather than because of interpersonal difficulty. This situation is found in South Africa with a large number of gangs operating as in, for instance, the Western Cape and Gauteng.
Letsebe (1995:99) claims that the violence being experienced in South Africa can also be explained in the context of socio-political transformation and change. According to Cronje (1994:247), change is constant, and the nature of it tends to be incremental, although it could be radical and occurring in quantum leaps. The author further maintains that uncertain political and economic conditions, inter-organisational competition, the level of government intervention, scarcity of natural and other resources, and the diversity of cultural norms and value systems create an increasingly volatile environment. Referring to change in South Africa, Cronje (1994:248) rightly says that "the social welfare institution in general and direct service agencies in particular is an extricable part of the political, economic and other social institutions and they are therefore affected by changes in these institutions".
One of the most tangible social consequences of poverty is crime (Wilson and Ramphele, 1989). Where work is difficult to find and where communities are in a state of upheaval, people are more likely to rob and assault others, sometimes to make a living and sometimes out of anger,
frustration and despair. Living in a community characterised by violence and crime, feeds into feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness.
Similarly, social workers, being major players in the provision of social services, cannot escape the impact of the societal dynamics referred to above. According to Kasiram (1998:171), it is well-nigh impossible to remain unscathed by these real life horror stories. Some express their stress and anxiety by resorting to alcohol or drugs, some engage in sport, and some develop neurotic or psychotic disorders, but all come back to the same point to face the stresses again.
In the past, not many social workers were involved in violence work at the macro-level. However, at present social workers have to live with violence at the micro-level, in families and in their communities. The situation of social workers in the country is captured by Drower (1991:38) in referring to the dilemmas posed by personal versus professional social work values:
"The individual practitioner can always remove herself from the
profession, but she cannot remove herself as easily from her personal position in society". Whether by choice or by default, social workers are living and working in violent communities and they have to be involved in some way with work related to violence: this is the reality of South Africa.
According to Kasiram (1998:172), in order to be optimally effective, we have a responsibility for healing ourselves. The problems encountered by both our clients and ourselves are at their ugliest worst today. Fiction does not remotely compare with true-life dramas. We are people, too, and need to maintain or regain our strength and balance by whatever works best for us (Kasiram,1998: 172).
Letsebe (1995:100-101) states that inter-locking frameworks can inform the analysis of violence in South Africa, namely the Life Model as propounded by Germain and Gitterman (1980) and the Societal Practice Framework by Garvin and Tropman (1992). Both these frameworks hold
the view that peoples' needs and problems are located at the interface between person and environment, and are defined as maladaptive transactions within the life space. This dictates that the professional intervention be formulated in terms of reciprocal adaptive processes (Germain & Gitterman, 1980).
In the Life Model, Germain and Gitterman (1980: 13) assert that "people's needs, problems or predicaments fall into three interrelated areas: 1) life transitions involving developmental stages, status role changes, crisis events; 2) the unresponsiveness of social and physical environments; and 3) communication and relationship difficulties in families and other primary groups". Violence in South Africa, in the context of this, was borne out of a multiplicity of factors, including issues related to a society in transition, crisis events, and the unresponsiveness of social and physical environments. These were some of the main features which resulted in the maladaptive transactions between people and their environments, thereby creating problems.
Societal change as a term used by Garvin and Tropman (1992) cited in Letsebe (1995:100), refers to "a kind of social change uniquely identified as the product of individual and collective effort". In South Africa, working with macro-level violence constitutes societal change work, as the criminal violence that engulfs the country is integrally linked with macro-political changes. In another sense, it is aimed at changing the face of social work practice by challenging social workers to respond to contextual problems.
Further, working with victims of violence or direct involvement with violence can produce certain stresses. Life stress refers to either a positive or negative person: environment relationship. It is positive when the environmental demand, process or event is experienced as a challenge and is accompanied by positive feelings, or it can be a negative relationship when actual or perceived environmental demands harm
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losses or conflicts exceed the actual perceived capacity for dealing with them (Germain & Gitterman, 1980:5).
According to McCann & Pearlman (1990: 133), one of the experiences can be burnout, which is "the psychological strain of working with difficult client populations". In the case of social workers in South Africa, their experiences in South Africa include dysfunctional persons: environment transactions within the country, incorporating poverty and wanton destruction of human life and property. According to Letsebe (1995:103), stresses by social workers can be symptomised by initial fear, depression, discouragement and feelings of incompetence and helplessness.
McKendrick and Hoffmann (1990) identify some of the impacts of violence on people. They include damage to relationships, dehumanisation, alienation, psychological disruption and moral atrophy.
Finally, one of the most serious outcomes of violence for everyone is that it engenders fear. Where there is violence, there is fear. With the existence of fear there is the abandonment of intimacy (Nouwen, 1989) and a loss of commitment to remain engaged with others. There is the temptation to turn away, to withdraw, to become isolated, to deny, to get on with one's own life by creating a safe haven behind high walls with access to armed response. With fear, there is an escalation and spiralling of all kinds of distancing behaviours and choices. Similarly, this fear and the persistent violence and crime that have infiltrated South Africa can constitute one of the factors that have resulted in the exodus of social workers to 'safer havens' abroad.
In conclUSion, crime and violence in South Africa challenges our professional commitments and our choice of lifestyles, either to remain in the country or to leave for 'safer environments'. It is clear that the South African environment challenges social workers to play an important role in value transformation. But the concern is whether social workers are ready
for this challenge or whether this increase in crime and violence will result in a situation that is unwieldy and hopeless, exacerbating the 'brain drain' in the country.