Wrath at anti-crime website rival
July 21 2006 at 02:38PM
By Bhavna Sookha and Rivonia Naidu
When Pieter Boshoff decided to set up a positive website about South Africa, it was to show international visitors that the country is wonderful to visit and invest in.
Little did he know that he would incur the wrath of those who believe his website is deceptive and an insult to victims of crime.
Boshoff has received a string of threatening phone calls, but the brains behind the realsouthafrica website said he would not back down from punting South Africa as a wonderful country.
He set up the website recently in retaliation to a website called crimexposouthafrica set up by Neil Watson, which, according to Boshoff, only served to bring down the reputation of this country.
Watson's website was set up to give an opportunity to south Africans who are fed up with crime to publish their comments and experiences for the international community.
Cape Town resident Boshoff said he had been a victim of violent crime twice, but he still chose to live in the country and be proactive.
He said Watson's website was "making things worse".
"I believe in the fight against crime, but at the same time I believe that everyone needs to do their bit," he said.
Boshoff said according to a recent United Nations Survey of Crime and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems statistics, there were nine other countries which had a higher per capita crime rate than South Africa.
It appears that initiatives aimed at highlighting the level of crime in South Africa are on the increase.
Chief executive officer of OMD Media Direction South Africa, Josh Dovey, aims to collate information of victims of crime and publish pictures in a series of advertisements in a national newspaper.
He said the aim was to gather as much information as possible about the number of South Africans who have been murdered while going about their daily lives.
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