Cape Town - Women and children face a catastrophic future in South Africa. This follows revelations by Police Minister Bheki Cele that in the first 90 days of this year, 6 083 people were murdered in the country.
This represents a 22% increase from the same period last year when 4 976 murders were recorded – 898 of them were women and 306 were children under the age of 17 years.
“Alarmingly, the murder of children recorded a 37.2% increase in the period of reporting,” said Cele.
There were 10 818 rapes in that same period which meant that 153 people were raped every single day.
The Eastern Cape’s Lusikisiki Police Station, Inanda Station in KwaZulu-Natal and Delft Police Station in the Western Cape recorded the highest incidents of rape for this quarter.
Almost every offence increased and this left the minister shaking his head and asking what went wrong.
“I have asked the management of the SAPS and the Provincial Commissioners of all nine provinces the exact same question.
“Honestly, no answer justified these dismal figures but we all agreed, that all provinces, districts, clusters and stations need to do things differently if indeed we want to see desired outcomes. The difference we speak of starts with minor to major changes.”
The Western Cape recorded an 11.7% increase in contact crimes, a 16.2% increase in sexual offences and an 11.4% increase in contact-related crimes in comparison to the same period in 2021.
Harare, Kraaifontein, Delft, Mfuleni and Khayelitsha made the top ten with the highest murder rates.
DA Western Cape spokesperson on community safety and member of the provincial legislature Gillion Bosman said the quarter crime statistics have once again highlighted the under-resourcing and under-deployment of SAPS in the province.
“Recently, it was revealed that over the past five financial years around 71% of our province's police stations have experienced a decrease of officers allocated. This means there are 804 fewer police officers situated at our stations, which is the first point of contact for members of our community. And it is here where we see the worrying correlation arise”
Ian Cameron from Action Society said that South Africa was a bloodbath and that cadre deployment a root cause of the destruction of the SAPS.
“The solutions are simple,” he said. “Do a skills audit in the SAPS to determine the merit of appointments and if there is no merit, that member must be sacked. Polygraph all members, starting with leadership to determine whether they have been involved in any corrupt activities, if so, sack them. Restore crime intelligence capabilities.”
He also called for the reinstatement of specialised units to deal with serious violent crime effectively without having to live in the community they work in and that police must be paid properly.
“Crime kingpins, including those part of the state, need to be targeted and taken out of operation. Restore reservist capabilities, especially to support specialised units. It is of utmost importance that these reservists do not come from the said communities in order for intimidation to be limited.”
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) said the rise of crime statistics in almost all categories came as no surprise, considering the environment within which the SAPS management, police officers and the stations do not enable for maximum utilisation of all available resources to ensure sufficient service delivery.
“We are of the view that crime statistics should not be the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Police, but the collective responsibility of the entire criminal justice cluster – with the SAPS accounting for the arrests made, the Judiciary accounting for the number of convictions and prosecutions, while the Department of Correctional Services accounts for the number of incarcerations.”