SA’s crime nightmare

SA’s crime nightmare

Murder is up 3.4 per cent, and sexual offences are up by 4.6 per cent, according to the latest stats.

In his 12 September release of South Africa’s annual 2018 / 2019 crime statistics, Police Minister General Bheki Cele noted both the instruction by President Cyril Ramaphosa to halve the country’s violent crimes within the next decade, and conceded that the numbers didn’t look good.

It’s going to be mammoth task to cut violent crime in half, he said: the latest stats, which were certified by StatsSA, show that contact crime has increased by 2,6 per cent on average.

Calling the instruction by the President a “mammoth” but “doable” task, minister Cele spoke of reintroducing police units that had been disbanded or under-resourced, and “capacitating” specialised units, detectives, the Hawks and crime intelligence.

He also said that consultations around the establishment of a Ministerial Advisory Council are underway, with the ISS (Institute for Security Studies), Corruption Watch, the Social Justice Coalition and members of the academic fraternity among those identified as prospective stakeholders.

In the past year, he continued, the resources allocated to cash-in-transit heists and other trio crimes had yielded positive results.

Other major anti-crime interventions underway include Operation Thunder, the Anti-Gang Unit and Operation Lockdown. He also highlighted the decrease in all categories of aggravated robbery barring that at residential premises.

“Yes,” he said, “the crime statistics are not looking good; however they look much better than last year in addressing the six year drastic increase in most crime categories.”

In the previous financial year, said Minister Cele, murders had increased by 1 320, a figure that had been ‘halved to 686’ in the financial year 2018/19.

“This means the rate of increase is slowing down. However, when this is translated to per centage change, the figure reflects an increase of 2.6 per cent in all contact crimes and the 17 community-reported crimes increased by 0.7 per cent.”

“While we are not where we want to be,” he insisted, “we are definitely not where we were, there are glimmers of improvements. We have recorded decreases in crimes of fear such as cash in transit heists, bank robberies, car and truck hijackings as well as robbery at non-residential premises.”

Intelligence had played a big role in terms of infiltrating CIT gangs and foiling their plans, and police visibility at malls and in other public areas had ensured that they were “a step closer to achieving (the) goals set out in the National Development Plan”. Minister Cele added that the National Stability Intervention Plan, which includes Crime Intelligence, Special Task Forces, National Intervention Units and Tactical Response Teams for quick mobilisation, had also gone a long way to tackling trio crimes. “We believe that the rebuilding of crime intelligence, the Hawks and better working relationships with State Security Agency, National Prosecution Authority, Department of Justice and the Department of Defence will continue to produce favourable results. Going forward we will spread the focus and resources to areas of concern to ensure that results are improved.”

The Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) Unit was one of the best units within the SAPS, he went on, recording 658 life sentences out of 504 registered cases and sentencing 387 suspects to prison sentences of 20 years and above.

Plans are underway to increase the number of FCS units countrywide and to recruit and train more women officers to work within this specialised environment, Minster Cele said, adding that President Ramaphosa’s call to reopen investigations into all cold cases of gender-based crimes had been heeded.

He ended by saying that the 2018/2019 annual crime statistics had been declared as official statistics in line with prescripts of the South African Statistical Quality Assessment Framework (SASQAF) and that “this stamp of approval will finally put to rest questions of the authenticity and legitimacy of the Crime Statistics.”