Pretoria gang-rape survivor Zanele*, brutalised in her home in 2008, has given up on justice. "I was gang-raped by the son of a senior Atteridgeville police officer and his cousin. I reported the case but I never got justice, despite evidence proving the two had raped me," she said.Zanele, who was 14 when she was raped, has moved to the North West village of Kgabalatsane to escape the shame of the attack.Atteridgeville station, where Zanele's case was reported, is reputed to be among South Africa's worst police stations, serving an area where criminals run riot - committing murder and assault and raping residents, with little or no police action. It ranks among the country's 63 worst-performing police stations identified last week by the acting national police commissioner Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane and marked for urgent attention.Of the 63 stations, Gauteng accounts for 28, Western Cape 15 and KwaZulu-Natal 11.Atteridgeville is not the only Pretoria station with an appalling record. Brooklyn and Garsfontein stations, whose precincts include the homes of diplomats and government officials, are on the list.Some police stations have unsolved crimes dating back a decade. To tackle the problem, a team of detectives, operating as part of the newly established National Management Intervention Unit, has been given the task of whipping the police stations into line.But the intervention is too little, too late, for many communities who, frustrated by the lack of police action, have taken the law into their hands by retaliating against scores of suspected criminals.Institute for Security Studies researcher Lizette Lancaster said bad policing was among the top concerns raised by communities."Of the 2322 protests recorded between January 2013 and December 2014, 11% were against crime or bad policing. Vigilantism constituted 161 (7%) of all these protests."She said the severity of vigilantism was illustrated recently in Parys in the Free State where four farmers were charged with killing two men suspected of carrying out a farm attack.In September last year in Etwatwa on the East Rand, vigilantes necklaced three teenagers, including twins, for suspected crimes.Lancaster said such vigilante actions demonstrated the high levels of frustration with rising crime by ordinary South Africans and what they perceived as the inability of the police to keep them safe.In November a poll by Afrobarometer - which conducts public attitude surveys on perceptions of the government's performance - showed 78% of people felt the government was performing "fairly badly" or "very badly" in reducing crime, with 27% believing combating crime was the most pressing issue in terms of service delivery.*Not her real name..