Murder increase slows
‘Glimmers of improvement’ in 2018/19 figures, says Cele
POLICE Minister Bheki Cele yesterday conceded that South Africa’s murder figures “do not look good”, and said police would work to halve violent crime within less than 10 years.
Last year, Cele said he was putting the heads of the SAPS management team on the block following drastic increases in the number of murders. When asked yesterday if any heads would roll this year, Cele backtracked, ruling this out.
He took a more optimistic approach, saying while the murder rate had seen another increase, it was not as steep as last year.
Cele, National Police Comissioner Khehla Sitole and their team yesterday presented the country’s 2018/2019 annual crime statistics to Parliament’s police portfolio committee.
“In the previous financial year, the number of murders increased by 1 320; that figure was halved in the financial year 2018/19 to 686.
‘‘This means the rate of increase is slowing down,” he said.
“While we are not where we want to be, we are definitely not where we were; there are glimmers of improvement.
‘‘We have recorded decreases in crimes of fear such as cash-intransit heists, bank robberies, car and truck hijackings, as well as robbery at non-residential premises.”
South Africa’s murder rate is up 1.4%, with some 57 people being murdered a day.
The total number of murders recorded was 21 022. This is 686 more than the previous reporting year.
Most murders happened over weekends, which suggested that these were fuelled by alcohol and drug abuse, according to police.
Cele said a high number of murder victims were killed by people they knew, indicating that these were not murders that might have been prevented by better policing.
“It will be very difficult for the police to police such cases where people know each other,” Cele said.
Attempted murder grew 4.1% to 18 980 cases, while assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm was up 2.2% to 170979.
Rape and sexual assault was also on the rise, reaching 52 420 cases reported.
This marks a 4.6% increase compared to the previous year and comes amid mounting pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce tougher measures to fight violence against women and children.
The total number of sexual offences stood at 52 420 (up 4.6%), while attempted murder cases stood at 18 980 (up 4.1%), 170 979 cases of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm were reported (up 2.2%), while common assault stood at 162 012 cases recorded (up 3.7%).
More South Africans were also victims of robbery with aggravating circumstances and common robbery, with 1.2 % and 2% increases respectively.
There were decreases across the board for some sub-categories of aggravated robbery, including for carjackings (down 1.8%), business robberies (down 1.3%), cash-in-transit robberies (down 23.1%), bank robberies (down 69.2%) and truck hijacking (down 1.7%).
Robberies at residential premises, however, saw an increase of 0.8%.