Clear-headed debate on SA's social scourge.(Life)

Anthony Altbeker is in Cape Town for work. His work - for the past 13 years - has been crime. Not doing it, but thinking about it.

Put that way though, crime has been every South African's "work" for several decades now. It consumes our freedom, our way of life, our thinking and our actions.

But for Altbeker it is more than just a question of trying to find a way to live his life, clunky as it is with the shackles of crime we all wear. His preoccupation with this peculiarly South African phenomenon has also been his paid occupation. He has spent much of his adult life analysing and trying to make sense of the scourge of modern South Africa, and trying to help find answers for curbing it.

On this early morning in Cape Town, far away from his pregnant wife and two small children …