Good news and bad in the latest crime statistics
MURDERS, burglaries and car hijackings in the Mthatha area have been on the rise over the past decade.
This emerged when the Daily Dispatch trawled through the crime statistics data for individual police stations provided by the SAPS in an 11-megabyte data set, and used as the platform for the speech delivered to South Africa by Police Minister Fikile Mbalula on Tuesday.
There are some good news stories, including an almost 30% drop in sexual offences in Grahamstown, where anti-rape culture activism is strong.
East London’s Fleet Street station also saw an almost 17% decline in these cases.
However, like most areas in the Eastern Cape, Komani (Queenstown) has seen a spate of burglaries – up by almost 50% – and the stats indicate growing drug abuse in Port Alfred.
The data, which goes back to 2008, shows that during the 10-year period, Ngangelizwe police station in Mthatha recorded a 33.3% increase in murder cases, a 46.6% increase in home burglaries and a shocking 320% increase in car hijackings.
In 2016-17, 36 killings were investigated in the area – nine more than 2015-16.
Home burglaries were up by 10 from 195 this year, compared to 185 the previous year.
At East London’s Fleet Street police station, sexual offence complaints dropped by 16.9% to 108 cases from 130 last year.
Burglaries are still happening at a rate of 1.6 break-ins a day, but the figures buck the provincial trend with a decrease of 8.9% – 580 cases compared to the previous year’s 637 reports.
The Fleet Street station is one of the biggest in the metro, with a jurisdiction covering the CBD, West Bank, Needs Camp, Quigney, Southernwood, Orange Grove and surrounding farms.
Grahamstown, where anti-rape culture activism is strong, especially at Rhodes University, showed a significant 29.4% drop in sexual offences with 60 cases, compared to 80 last year.
However, home burglaries are still a menace in the academic city – up 2.7% to 529 from 515 the year before.
However, the number has almost halved since 2008, when 968 cases were reported.
In Port Alfred drug-related crimes spiked by 30.8%, with 68 cases from 52.
There were 277 home burglaries year from 281, a drop of 1.4%.
In Komani, break-ins rose sharply from 130 cases to 190.
Buffalo Flats saw drug-related crimes fall by a healthy 44.8% to 160 cases from last year’s 306 cases.
Buffalo Flats police station serves Parkside, Pefferville, Vergenoeg and Igoli.
Buffalo City-based researcher on local governance and community safety Glenn Hollands cautioned against distortions and political manipulation of statistics earlier this week, but said: “There is a misconception that more criminal cases reported this at a certain police station mean they are bad at handling crime.
“The crimes figures are to some extent an inverse reflection of SAPS administrative performance – efficient stations that can handle large case volumes might reflect worse statistics than poorly performing stations that turn complainants away.” Hollands also added that the statistics should not be taken as gospel truth.
“The SAPS are notorious for manipulating the stats for political objectives – mainly to protect the government’s image. Nonetheless, the stats are a hugely significant data based on crime and it would be foolish to ignore them.”
Bhisho legislature’s safety and liaison portfolio head and ANC MPL Michael Peter said there was room for improvement and the police should be given more resources.
“A concerted effort is needed to deal with gangs, taxi violence and the murder of women, which are contributing factors to the high murder rate in the province.”
Peter added police needed to double their efforts in combating the scourge of drug trafficking.
“This is another contributor high crime rate.” — to the