Improve policing or SA will become republic of crime

The national crime statistics for 20172018 released yesterday paint a bleak picture. Some 20,336 people were murdered in the year. This represents a 6.9% year-on-year increase – one of the highest since the end of apartheid 24 years ago. Police minister Bheki Cele admitted the death toll “brings us close to a war zone” with 57 people murdered a day. Indeed, our statistics over the past decade compare unfavourably with, for example, deaths in the Afghanistan war.

The bloodbath includes this province where murder has risen by a staggering 5.2%, meaning on average more than 10 people are slain each day in the Eastern Cape. The rate of attempted murder has similarly risen, and so have car hijackings, sexual assaults and robberies. Crimes against business, such as cash-in-transit heists and bank robberies, too, spiked.

Alarmingly, this province has the second-highest recorded number of murders of women and children.

Mthatha is the murder capital of the Eastern Cape and the ninth-worst hotspot in the country.

Another four Eastern Cape police stations are among 30 precincts with the highest number of murders.

Minister Cele admitted police had “dropped the ball” and revealed there was a dire shortage of officers and a lack of interministerial co-ordination of security-related issues. He promised to improve the situation, hold his generals accountable and particularly focus on how police deal with crimes against women.

The minister’s frankness is welcome but the fact is that these statistics are an indictment of policing strategies.

MPs are right to say that the SAPS needs to rethink strategy and should up policing in crime hotspots and reintroduce specialised units for gang and taxi industry crimes, both of which contribute greatly to the violent crime rate.

On the one hand, we urgently need greater police visibility and a zero-tolerance approach.

On the other, the SAPS needs to be far more tech-savvy and intelligence driven.

We agree it cannot be the norm that South Africans can be hijacked, robbed, raped and killed every day. While the underlying socio-economic causes of crime will take time to resolve, citizens must be able to rely on police to reverse the lurch towards becoming a republic of crime.

Alarmingly, this province has the secondhighest recorded number of murders for women and children