Huge spike in East London burglaries
Non-residential premises targeted for cables and metal to sell as scrap
East London has been hammered by a 288% spike in burglaries at non-residential premises, placing the city at number two in SA.
This trend was flagged in the latest national crime stats released by police minister Bheki Cele on Wednesday afternoon.
Cele released figures for the period between July and September this year.
Authorities are blaming the illegal trade in scrap metal as the key contributing factor to the spike.
But the city has also featured at number three in robberies at non-residential premises, with 48 reported. Non-residential premises include business premises, state buildings and infrastructure.
The Daily Dispatch has been reporting on a surge in thefts and burglaries targeting public infrastructure and residential areas. They include looting of cables and theft of metal from public buildings.
The province’s head of department for transport & community safety, Vuyani Mapolisa, said the illegal trade in scrap metal was a big headache for the government, to the point where the province was calling for legislation to ban scrapyards.
According to the latest numbers, 167 cases of burglaries at non-residential properties were reported at the central East London police station between July and September.
This is a surge of 124 from 43 cases in the same period last year. This is six cases shy of Rustenburg in the North West, which is sitting at number one in SA.
The number does not include similar cases reported in adjacent police precincts such as Buffalo Flats or Cambridge.
Speaking to the Daily Dispatch after the release of the stats, Mapolisa attributed the spike in this crime category in the city in large part to the illegal trade in scrap metal.
He called for the fast-tracking of a new law to ban the trade outright. “The economics of crime is supply and demand. Here in places like BCM, where it’s urban, these places dealing with scrap metal are killing us.
“Currently we are proposing legislation to deal with the issue of scrap metal that is cheap.
“Because these people take any metal, wherever it comes from, it has to be regulated.”
He said he was personally a victim of this type of theft after criminals stole cables from his church. Other churches, too, had been hit by cable theft, with thieves also targeting the cables used for speakers.
“It tells you that there is a demand somewhere and they are feeding that demand.
“In places like East London, police are focusing on murder and sexual offences, but I’m telling you that level of crime has gone far down.
“Criminals have changed focus, because with crime you are dealing with a moving target.”
He added that the government would need to deal with the economics of crime if it was going to prevent it.
Dr Oscar Magadze, head of criminology at Fort Hare University, agreed with Mapolisa, saying crime was further influenced by the fact that East London was surrounded by a number of poor settlements.
“Those buildings that were abandoned by the apartheid government became targets and criminals end up targeting those types of properties to vandalise and get what they can to sell. Sometimes they use the same materials to build shacks for themselves.”
The stats show that the Eastern Cape continues to experience a rise in the number of violent crimes, including rape, sexual assault and murder.
Stock theft, especially in the former Transkei area, continues to be a problem.
Two police stations — Lusikisiki and Mthatha — again reported sky-high stats for sexual offences and rape. Mthatha is at number two countrywide with 70 reported rape cases — which reflects an increase of 12 over last year — while Lusikisiki is at number 4 with 64 rape cases. This represents a decrease of 5.
In terms of sexual offences, Lusikisiki is at number two with 77 cases, while Mthatha is at number six with 72 cases.
The Eastern Cape is the province most affected by stock theft, with Qumbu at number one, followed by Tsolo in second place and Mthatha at number five.
The stats further show that murder has risen in the Eastern Cape by 31%, with 313 cases, compared to the same period last year, attempted murder by 30% and car hijacking by 69%.
Both Mapolisa and Magadze agreed that one of the contributing factors to sexual assault and rape cases was the practice of ukuthwala, which Mapolisa said his department had been tackling by educating residents in the Mpondoland area. In the rural towns, the province was suffering from a lack of policing resources, a fact they had reported to Cele.
DA spokesperson on crime Bobby Stevenson said “a tsunami of violent crime continues to sweep through the Eastern Cape, fuelled by a culture of lawlessness which sees people brutally murdered, buildings hijacked, long-distance buses attacked and taxi warfare.
“The crime statistics, released today, once again reinforce the province’s reputation as the killing field of SA. In the three months under review, 1,303 people were murdered across the province, a 31.3% increase compared to the same period last year.”