Rough year for police shows in stats
FORTY-TWO people are murdered a day in South Africa and sex crimes remain high despite small annual falls, SA’s latest crime statistics showed yesterday.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said murders had continued a downward trend since the end of apartheid in 1994 and had been reduced by 27.6 percent from more than 18 000 recorded eight years ago for the year ended in March.
“We are not there yet, but with the participation of all sectors of society, we are turning the tide against crime,” he said, presenting the country’s annual figures in Parliament.
“We must win the battle against crime, in whatever form it manifests itself. Crime affects all the people of our country across class, gender, religion and colour.
“It is our common enemy and collectively, we shall defeat this scourge.”
Yet SA remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world outside of conflict zones, with a murder rate surpassed only by Latin American nations that are embroiled in gruesome battles with narcotraffickers.
SA’s annual murder rate fell 3.1 percent to 15 609 deaths, an average of about 42 a day. Other crimes such as attempted murder, aggravated robberies, serious and common assaults also saw a downward shift.
Most of the violence was shown to have taken place in townships.
Joburg’s tightly packed Alexandra township, for example, saw 58 murders over the year, while nearby swish Sandton recorded just nine.
Cape Town’s rich seaboard suburb of Camps Bay recorded no killings, while outlying Gugulethu had 120 murders.
Mthethwa said that sexual offences remained “stubbornly high”, adding that under-reporting was a problem.
According to the figures given, total sex crimes fell to 64 514, down 1 682 on the previous year, while rape also fell 1.9 percent, from 56 272 last year.
“The decrease should be understood in perspective, that as a government we still remain concerned about the conviction rate of criminals,” Mthethwa said.
Slightly fewer than 800 children under the age of 18 were murdered and nearly 26 000 were sexually assaulted, showing lowered levels in both categories.
But Mthethwa also warned against rising numbers of young children being targeted by criminals.
“One of the shifts that we have witnessed is that although crimes against women and children are decreasing, we are now seeing a trend where young children are being targeted and abused,” he said.
The Institute for Security Studies thinktank said the latest figures left out serious crimes, such as corruption, political assassination and domestic violence.
“Of course we welcome the ongoing reductions in most violent crime categories,” the institute’s crime and justice programme chief, Gareth Newham, said.
“However, these statistics do not reflect some serious endemic and emerging security threats facing South Africans.”
The DA blasted the “miniscule” drop in the crime statistics, with shadow police minister Dianne Kohler Barnard saying: “These incremental changes are cold comfort to law-abiding citizens who live in fear of criminals.”
Security experts said the police had lost in the fight against crime, with the upheaval in police’s leadership in the past few years more than likely being partly responsible for this.
Two police commissioners – Jackie Selebi and Bheki Cele – have been axed over a corruption conviction and a dubious R1.67 billion office lease deal respectively, and crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli has been suspended pending the outcome of a murder inquest.
Johan Burger of the Institute for Security Studies said that although there had been a decrease in the overall crime figures, the “slowdown” in the rate of the decrease was “a little worrying”.
In some cases, the decrease had been half that of the previous year, said Burger.
He said part of the reason for this was “the difficulty that the police have been experiencing over the last year or two in terms of its leadership”.
Asked if he was satisfied with the figures, Mthethwa said: “There will always be disappointment in the fight against crime.
“This is a role which is always under construction. There will never be a situation where we can say ‘we have arrived’ in fighting crime.”