South Africa is a vulnerable country with a serious crime problem – something not even the police can shy away from.
“The crime situation is of greatest concern to the South African Police Service (SAPS) in Gauteng and its people,” admitted Gauteng Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Elias Mawela. He said this when he presented the province’s crime statistics for the period January to March 2022 to the Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Community Safety at the IEC Hall in the municipal building in Randfontein on Tuesday, June 14.
With crime being totally out of hand, all eyes were on the commissioner to explain why the province is in this big, dark and ugly hole that is crime, and what the hell police are going to do about it. To put things into perspective, most crimes out of the just over 30 categories mentioned showed a staggering increase for the period January to March 2022 – most notably murder by 45,2%, attempted murder by 31,7%, rape by 11,6%, truck hijacking by 32,5%, carjacking by 26,1%, assault GBH by 16,4%, and common assault by 14,7%. (See far below for a full breakdown of the crime statistics)
The commissioner is also well aware of a survey revealing how confidence levels in the SAPS have dropped not only in Limpopo and the Northern Cape, but now in Gauteng as well.
THE REASONS:
Lieutenant General Mawela attributed the crime situation in the province to the following reasons.
Firstly, he said, “At the start of the 4th quarter in 2020/ 2021, the country was on lockdown adjusted level 3 for January and February. In March we moved to adjusted lockdown level 1. The regulations for level 3 confined people to their place of residence daily from 21:00 to 06:00 the next morning which reduced the movement of persons as compared to the current period under review.
The repealing of the curfew on December 30, 2021 meant increased mobility of people on the streets, thereby creating an opportunity for crime to be committed around the clock targeting unsuspecting, innocent and vulnerable people.
“We had anticipated when we released the previous quarter crime statistics that the honeymoon period was over. We indeed expected increased mobility of people 24/ 7 during this period which for us meant an increase in criminality as there was no more state of disaster lockdown regulations that we were empowered to enforce by arresting transgressors. It is thus clear that the restrictions applicable to the two periods under discussion are different and impacted differently on policing activities.
“Secondly, opportunity for criminality was also created by the long trading and operating hours for on-consumption liquor outlets which added its unique contributions to substance abuse. Furthermore, the increase of public and private parties also required a diversion of police resources to attend to complaints/ public disturbance due to the abuse of alcohol which remains one of the main contributors to crime.”
The third reason is that during the period of January to March 2022, they observed an escalated rate of protest action about “almost everything”.
For the period under review, we had 556 protests that were attended to, of which 425 were peaceful while 131 were unrest-related, meaning there was an element of violence. There was a high level of dissatisfaction among our communities which required deployment of our already overstretched and limited resources from hardcore policing to policing of protest action and gatherings.
“Over and above the policing of protests, we also had to deploy members to police 126 medium-risk major events as compared to 39 the previous period. Cable theft and damage to infrastructure in the province also added more challenges to our already strained resources.”
He explained that the police are legally obliged to make resources available to police protest action irrespective of its nature and circumstances.
“At the same time, we equally had to provide resources for the safety, security and successful hosting of such major events to prevent and combat violent crimes which were also on the rise. Criminals don’t care if there is protest action or not, if they want to commit CIT or continue their business they will do so, whether you have deployed members at the stadium to police whatever event.”
Contact crimes such as assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, common assault and aggravated robbery, which he referred to as ‘the crime of fear’ continued to account for the bigger bulk of the overall crime category, contributing to 33% of the overall crime in Gauteng. “These crimes contributed to other crimes such as attempted murder and murder.
Social ills within our communities are the main root causes of assault incidents. Should the community resort to a more acceptable means of conflict management and reduce substance abuse, surely sub-categories of crime such as domestic violence, gender-based violence, murder and attempted murder will be reduced.”
According to the commissioner, aggravated robbery subjects the victim to multiple trauma. “It is one of the priority crimes and most-feared of the trio crimes. We have seen an 11% increase translating to a total of 6 342 cases.”
Top of the list is hijacking of trucks and passenger vehicles.
Lieutenant General Mawela said vehicles are hijacked in Gauteng for the following reasons:
• Old cars are taken for spare parts or rebuild other cars.
• Luxury cars are taken for further use in the commission of other crimes such as CIT robberies, house and business robberies, and even illegal exports.
• Trucks and delivery vans are hijacked solely to steal the valuable cargo.
Some of these hijackings result in kidnappings of drivers and passengers – a worrying stat that continues to rise across all districts. Hijacking may also lead to rape and murder,” said Lieutenant General Mawela.
With murder going up by 45,2%, an analysis has shown again that the majority of the contributing factors are arguments, misunderstandings (not domestic-related) and road rage.
“It is clear that we are unable to resolve our conflict, and we resort to violence whenever there is conflict.”
Police also observed the tendency of mass killings, referring to the shooting incident in Kagiso last year when five suspects were arrested in connection with the murder of seven people and the attempted murder of another five. The mass shooting took place at the end of October close to where wedding celebrations were being held.
“We have trigger-happy people who just shoot at random at people seated around a table enjoying themselves. As a result we now have multiple bodies lying there; six murders in one incident. During this period we lost five police officers; one was killed on-duty while four others were murdered off-duty.
“Just yesterday, another police officer was shot and killed. This officer was attached to the Flying Squad deployed to patrol our national roads to deal with hijackings.”
Peace, safety and security can be restored. Only if we are able to work together, attacking one enemy which is the criminal, we will succeed in our endeavour to reduce broad categories of crime.”
THE PLAN GOING FORWARD …
“We will continue to intensify Okae Malao operations which are currently serving us well. These operations serve to further disrupt the criminal intentions and win back the minds and hearts of law-abiding citizens of this province. Heightened focus will be at the provincial top 40 priority police stations. We will maximise the utilisation of existing government and privately owned information technology infrastructure to combat, detect and solve crimes. Through a established government war room we shall mobilise the whole of government to address the root causes of crime and leverage on the improved community intelligence network for better crime prevention. Intelligence is in the hands of the people. When the community works with us and shares information, we will be able to deal with criminality in our society.
“We shall also enhance the collaboration and optimally utilise all the safety structures established within our communities that work within the ambit of the law. We welcome their contribution and will continue to work with them so that we reduce the levels of crime in this province.
“In response to the theft and damage to essential infrastructure we have developed a six-pillar plan and established a multi-disciplinary integrated essential infrastructure task team to prevent, combat and conduct intelligence-led investigations of those crimes. These teams operate on a 24/ 7 basis in all 30 regions of this province.
To improve the level of confidence in the police in Gauteng, my management met with Dr Ben Roberts from the Human Sciences Research Council to discuss the survey they had conducted, and we have committed to working tirelessly to implement its recommendations.
“Lastly, Team Gauteng will intensify the stakeholder engagement programmes by station commanders to be conducted every Wednesday – in other words we have directed that all station commanders must go out and engage with the community, mobilise them to work with us and listen to their concerns, address their concerns where we can, and move forward.
“On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays we will have boots on the ground with Okae Malao operations and entrench ourselves in the communities we serve through the effective and functional community policing forums.”
PLEASE NOTE: Information below was made available by the SAPS.
The following crimes have shown an increase:
Contact crimes (crimes against the person):
• Murder by 45,2% (from 966 in the same period January to March 2021 to 1 403)
• Sexual offences by 11,3% (from 2 625 in the same period January to March 2021 to 2 921)
• Attempted murder by 31,7% (from 1 055 in the same period January to March 2021 to 1 389)
• Assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm by 16,4% (from 8 323 in the same period January to March 2021 to 9 687)
• Common assault by 14,7% (from 10 706 in the same period January to March 2021 to 12 280)
• Common robbery by 7,6% (from 3 507 in the same period January to March 2021 to 3 772)
• Robbery with aggravating circumstances by 10,6% (from 11 494 in the same period January to March 2021 to 12 715)
Sexual offences:
• Rape by 11,6% (from 2 031 in the same period January to March 2021 to 2 267)
• Sexual assault by 10,9% (from 477 in the same period January to March 2021 to 529)
• Attempted sexual offences by 6,7% (from 60 in the same period January to March 2021 to 64)
• Contact sexual offences by 7% (from 57 in the same period January to March 2021 to 61)
Aggravated robbery:
• Carjacking by 26,1% (from 2 328 in the same period January to March 2021 to 2 936)
• Robbery at residential premises by 4,6% (from 1 751 in the same period January to March 2021 to 1 832)
• Robbery of cash in transit by 15,8% (from 19 in the same period January to March 2021 to 22)
• Truck hijacking by 32,5% (from 206 in the same period January to March 2021 to 273)
Contact-related crimes:
• Arson by 8,9% (from 90 in the same period January to March 2021 to 98)
• Malicious damage to property by 20,3% (from 6 189 in the same period January to March 2021 to 7 445)
Property-related crimes:
• Burglary at residential premises by 0,3% (from 8 927 in the same period January to March 2021 to 8 953)
• Theft of motor vehicle and motorcycle by 3,2% (from 4 845 in the same period January to March 2021 to 4 999)
• Theft out of or from a motor vehicle by 2,1% (from 5 739 in the same period January to March 2021 to 5 860)
Other serious crimes:
• All theft not mentioned elsewhere by 8,3% (from 16 890 in the same period January to March 2021 to 18 288)
• Commercial crime by 14,8% (from 7 623 in the same period January to March 2021 to 8 753)
The following crimes have shown a decrease:
Aggravated robbery:
• Robbery at non-residential premises by 3,7% (from 1 634 in the same period January to March 2021 to 1 574)
Property-related crimes:
• Burglary at non-residential premises by 7,1% (from 3 233 in the same period January to March 2021 to 3 004)
• Stock theft by 8,3% (from 241 in the same period January to March 2021 to 221)
Other serious crimes:
• Shoplifting by 14,5% (from 3 755 in the same period January to March 2021 to 3 211)
Click here for the full stats including crime detected as a result of police action.
