Gauteng crime stats: 7 202 of 22 243 arrests involve undocumented foreigners

Of the 22 243 arrests made in Gauteng between July and September this year, 7,202 involved undocumented foreigners.

This was revealed by police Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant-General Tommy Mthombeni during a presentation of the second quarter crime statistics for the 2024/25 financial year. Mthombeni was addressing the Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Community Safety.

The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) said earlier this month that it had conducted a nationwide tour of South Africa’s prisons in September and October to assess their operational and human resources capacities.

Responding to a parliamentary question, DCS revealed that as of October 2024, the number of foreign nationals in the correctional services system was approximately 18 000.

READ MORE: 18,000 foreign nationals serving time in SA prisons

This figure includes both sentenced prisoners and those awaiting sentencing.

Of the 22 243 arrests:

• 69 arrests were for murder
• 102 arrests for robbery aggravating
• 1 115 arrests for assault GBH (grievous bodily harm) and 966 arrests for common assault
• 3 251 suspects arrested for drug-related offences
• 3 149 suspects arrested or driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs
• 294 suspects arrested for illegal possession of firearms and/or ammunition
  

Recoveries:

• 238 firearms (22 rifles, five shotguns and 211 revolvers/pistols)
• 3 480 various kinds of ammunition
• 223 dangerous weapons
• 138 hijacked/stolen vehicles and vehicles used in the commission of a crime
• 173 117 kilograms of various kinds of drugs
• 23 118 kilograms of cables (essential infrastructure)
• 90 305 litres of liquor
• 487 024 counterfeit or illicit goods

Gauteng contributed 26.9% to the national overall crime, a 6 525 reduction in the number of counts. 108 741 counts were recorded in the second quarter of 2023 and 102 216 were recorded in the same period in 2024 — translating to a 6% reduction in overall crime.

Gauteng contact crimes

This category includes offences such as murder, attempted murder, assault GBH and common assault as well as robbery aggravating.

Gauteng managed to record a 7.6% decrease in the category.

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Nine Gauteng police stations are in the top 30 for contact crimes in the country and only one -Roodepoort – recorded an increase.

Murder, attempted murder and assault-related offences showed a decline. However sexual offences, particularly, rape and sexual assault, saw an increase.

Eight Gauteng police stations are in the top 30 in the country for murder, and five of them recorded an increase – JHB Central, Roodepoort, Orange Farm, Germiston, and Evaton.

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Gauteng also recorded a reduction in arson, malicious damage to property, residential burglary, business burglary, theft of motor vehicles, theft out of or from motor vehicles and stock theft.

Sexual offences

For the quarter under review, Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences arrested 1,031 suspects for sexual offences.

To date, of the 155 cases that were in court, 130 sexual offenders were sentenced to a combined 27 life terms and 1 042 years’ imprisonment.

One of the cases involves a serial rapist, Nkosinathi Emmanuel Phakathi, known as the ‘Benoni Serial Rapist’, who was convicted on 148 counts, including 90 counts of rape and 43 counts of kidnapping among other charges.

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The court sentenced him on 4 October 2024 to 42 life terms and an additional 791 years and six months imprisonment.

Eleven Gauteng police stations were in the top 30 for sexual offences in the country, and seven of those recorded a decrease.

For rape, 10 Gauteng police stations were in the top 30 and eight recorded an increase.