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Members of Parliament (MPs) have expressed outrage over South Africa’s alarming crime statistics, which showed a sharp increase in murder and rape cases between January and March this year.
Police Minister Bheki Cele and the management of the South African Police Service (Saps) on Friday presented the quarterly crime statistics to parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police.
The murder rate shot up to 22.2% in the period under review. 6,083 people were killed in South Africa between January and March this year, compared to the same period last year.
The top four causative factors attributed to these deaths were arguments, vigilantism, revenge, or retaliation and robberies.
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Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus) MP Pieter Groenewald said the crime stats were very disturbing, especially when it came to violence against women and children.
Out of the 6,083 people murdered in the country during the period, 898 of them were women and 306 were children under the age of 17 years.
“What is most disturbing for me is when we come to women and children where, for instance, the murder of children was an increase of 37,2% and women 70,5%.
“If you look at the figure of children, I say it’s most disturbing,” Groenewald said.
With 10,818 people (13,7%) raped in SA in the first three months of this year, Democratic Alliance (DA) MP, Okkie Terblanche, called on Cele to resign over the country’s crime situation.
“We saw rising crime stats in just about all categories… This means the police are losing the fight against crime.
“This cannot go on like this, we need a serious explanation of what is happening here,” Terblanche said.
Almost half of these cases, a staggering 4,653 rapes, took place at the home of the rape victim or the home of the rapist.
Public parks, beaches, streets, open fields, parking areas and abandoned buildings were identified as the second most likely places for rapes to occur.
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Terblanche said looking at the country’s crime statistics, it would appear war-torn Ukraine was far much safer than SA.
“In any self-respecting country, the minister would have resigned by now… This is totally unacceptable; South Africa is at war with itself.”
African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) MP, Kenneth Meshoe, also echoed the other MPs’ sentiments about the crime stats.
He said the figures were a clear sign that Saps was losing the fight against crime.
“It would be an understatement to say we are disappointed with the crime statistics,” Meshoe said.
“It’s not helpful to be told police are not losing the fight against crime. The figures speak for themselves. They are very very disturbing,” he added.
Another DA MP, Andrew Whitfield, demanded answers from Saps management on its strategies to effectively deal with SA’s crime situation.
He described the latest crime stats as the most horrific in recent memory.
“Our country has become a crime scene where kidnapping has increased by over 100% year-to-year. This is an absolutely shocking crime statistic.
“Murder is up by over 20% and sexual offences are also up, it’s a bloodbath,” Whitfield said.
Meanwhile, with 27 police officers killed in just three months, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP, Henry Shembeni, called on government to declare police killings as crimes against the state.
“I think this must be regarded as a crime against the state, so that something is done against these perpetrators who kill police.
“A policeman is representing the state and something different must be done by the criminal justice system to stop the killings of police officers,” Shembeni said.
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