Crime stats: Murder and sex crime down, attempted murder spike

There has been a decrease in the murder and sexual offences rate in the crime stats for the last quarter.

This was revealed by minister Bheki Cele and police service leadership during a briefing before Parliament’s Police Portfolio Committee on Friday.

The data covers April to June 2023, and was presented by Police General Norman Sekhukhune.

Murder

According to the stats presented, murder cases decreased by 3.1 % to 196 compared to the previous reporting period.

6 228 murders were committed between April – June 2023 down from 6,424 during the same period, while there have been 5 969 attempted murders an increase of 7%.

Inanda in KwaZulu-Natal was the top murder province in the country with the highest number of reported cases.

This was followed by Umlazi, Delft, Gugulethu and Harare in the Western Cape.

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Other murders

The crime stats also revealed 293 children were murdered in South Africa between April-June 2023, an increase of 20.6%. That is 50 more than the same quarter in the previous year.

There have been 354 attempted murders of children, a 15.3% increase.

The crime stats showed there were 14 farm murders recorded in the quarter, with the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal taking the top sport with four farm murders each.

The contact crimes category with the highest increase was assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm (GBH), which went up to 37, 491 from 34,635. This was followed by common robbery, which came in at 11,404 from 10,565.

Sexual assaults

The crime stats also showed there were 11 616 sexual offences between April – June 2023. This is 3 872 monthly, 129 daily and 5.38 offences per hour

There were also 42 773 rapes in the past 12 month with 3 564 per month, 119 per day, 4.95 per hour

Crimes against South African Police Services (Saps) also increased with 31 officers were killed between April and June 2023, compared to 18 in the previous quarter.

Improvement

Minister Bheki Cele said there was an improvement in the crime stats

“We’ve realised we’ve taken the right direction, I’m sure the green shoots will be there. Not much but we think, as we said last time, it looks like we are turning the tide. We hope the trend will grow.”

Cele is set to release the detailed quarterly crime statistics in Pretoria later. 

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