Johannesburg – With more than 83 murders and 138 rapes per day, South Africa has become a violent country following the release of the latest crime statistics by police minister Bheki Cele.
This comes after Cele presented the crime statistics for the third quarter of 2022/23 on Friday, which cover the period from October 1 to December 31, 2022.
The minister conceded that the country’s murder rate increased from the previous quarter, as did the murder of women and children, while the statistics indicated that there was a decrease in cash-in-transit heists and bank robberies.
Cele added that more than 7 555 murders were committed in the last three months of 2022.
According to the crime civil society movement Action Society, Cele has lost the war against crime, with director of community safety at Action Society Ian Cameron saying the country has become increasingly violent and a bloodbath.
Cele said the murder rate of women had increased by 22% from the previous year, bringing the rate of murders to 1 101.
Cameron said the government does not have solutions to solve the increasingly violent society that South Africa has become, adding that cadre deployment and political interference were responsible for the country’s woes.
"The SAPS does not have any preventative measures in place. We have no crime intelligence to speak of, and all the country’s detectives are severely overworked. We are in this war because of cadre deployment and political interference. In matters concerning criminal justice, the ANC does not want criminal justice to work properly because they would be caught out as the biggest crime syndicate this country has seen in the past 30 years," Cameron said.
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba said the latest crime figures point to a country at war with itself, adding that Cele’s call for more boots on the streets would not solve the crime problem.
ActionSA is extremely concerned after the release of the recent crime statistics, which paint a picture that the SAPS has completely lost control of the war against crime in this country despite protestations by the minister to the contrary.
“Despite the police's December 2022 report, his leadership has been unable to change the worsening trajectory of crime in South Africa. It is concerning that there has been an increase in crime on all levels, particularly with a 10.1% increase in murders and a 9.8% increase in instances of rape, showing to an extent the safety of South Africans is compromised.
"The only decrease reported was in sexual offences; taking into account the inability of SAPS to provide a safe environment for victims of sexual abuse, this decrease only proves that fewer sexual offences were reported, not that the number of sexual offences decreased," Mashaba said.
The Star