Gauteng is heavyweight contributor of crime in country

According to ANC Member of the Provincial Legislature (MPL), Jacob Khawe, people of Gauteng have no regard for the law and find it easy to kill each other.

Khawe was commenting on the crime stats of the province presented by the Provincial Police Commissioner, Lieutenant General Deliwe de Lange.

The commissioner, together with the leadership team from her office, presented the crime stats for the 2015/16 financial year to the Gauteng Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Community Safety on 20 September.

The murder rate in the province has increased by a staggering 4.7 per cent, with 3 842 cases recorded. The province saw an increase in contact crimes, with the only exclusion being sexual offences which saw a decrease of 4 per cent.

Democratic Alliance MPL, Kate Lorimer, however, felt that the sexual offences statistic was not a true reflection of what was happening on the ground. She said the number was way higher because most sexual offence victims did not report such cases.

“The actual number is terrifying. So many people, especially in informal settlements, don’t report cases because they fear harassment by the police.”

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Presenting the overall crime statistics of the province, Colonel John van der Merwe told the committee that the crime stats related to two broad categories of crime which comprised community-reported serious crimes and crime as a result of police action.

Leading the list of community-reported serious crimes was murder along with common assault, common robbery, attempted murder and malicious damage to property.

Van der Merwe said four crimes that were detected as a result of police action, or intervention, were illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, drug-related crimes, driving under the influence of alcohol, and drugs and sexual offences.

Chairperson of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Community Safety, Sochayile Khanyile, expressed concern about the rise of murder cases in Gauteng.

“The committee has noted that since the financial year 2012/13 incidents of murder increased by 29 per cent in Gauteng. In the 2015/16 time frame, the province recorded a further 4.7 per cent increase in murder incidents. The increase is a serious cause for concern for the committee, as it paints a picture that Gauteng residents are not safe in the province,” Khanyile said, adding that more intervention programmes were needed in areas where these incidents were more prevalent.

De Lange admitted that the crime rate in the province was high, even dubbing Gauteng as the ‘heavyweight’ contributor of crime in the country. She believed the back-to-basics approach implemented in the police service assisted and ensured that communities in the province were safer and crime statistics would eventually decrease.

De Lange committed to, together with her managerial team, ensure that service standards improved at police stations in the province.

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