The politicisation of crime has metastasised into a form of political parastism a system in which the suffering of communities is not a problem to be solved, but a resource to be extracted. Certain parties have no reason to exist without the steady hum of violence and addiction; they thrive on the very misery they claim to oppose.

In the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town, the DA has governed for over fifteen years. Yet crime and drug abuse are still blamed on the national government a government of which they are now part of through the GNU. They campaign relentlessly on the pain of the townships, while budgets meant to address the root causes of crime remain untouched. The result is not safety, but spectacle: a growing class of "crime celebrities" who descend on every tragedy like tow trucks at a crash, pointing to dirty streets as the cause of mass killings, and converting every corpse into a campaign prop.

This is not governance. It is the cynical abuse of communal anguish for electoral survival. It offers nothing to victims, nothing to prevention, and everything to political branding. Worse still, it emboldens the perpetrators. Through calculated media manipulation, victims are made to look like the problem, and the guilty are reframed as the wronged.

At its core, this is politics stripped of duty where power is pursued not to serve constituents, but to secure benefits and privileges. Those who hold the authority to act choose instead to point fingers. And as long as suffering remains useful, nothing fundamental will change.