MEDIA BRIEFING BY MEC WM MORWENG ON THE OCCASION OF THE RELEASE OF THE 2024/2025 SECOND QUARTER CRIME STATISTICS
12 December 2024
Stilfontein Police Station – 14:00
Depuy Provincial Commissioner, General Asaneng
Other senior SAPS Officers here present;
Acting Chief Director for Civilian Secretariat, Mme Dikeledi Letsapa
Other senior managers and officials of the Department and the Police here present
Members of the Media
Good afternoon
The trend for the crime statistics released exactly three months ago, on the 10th of September, highlighted the disturbing pattern of some of our 85 Police stations consistently and constantly appearing in the in the Top 30 reporting crimes in the country. Though at the time, it was pleasing to note a significant 4.3% drop of sexual offences, it was equally depressing to note an incredible 20.3% increase of murder cases.
For the July to September 2024 reporting period, the picture has improved slightly due to intensive and incessant work by the Police.
Even with that, it is worrying that there are still areas where crime remains unacceptably high as indicated in the percentage reduction of the 17 community reported crimes which only decreased by a mere 3.3%. Contact crimes which generally are a challenge were reduced by 1.7% and this is due to the nominal increases of some crimes, such as murder which increased by 4.2%, attempted murder by 8.2% and common robbery by 5.7%.
The reason why there appears to be an exponential increase in multiple murder, is due to the fact that each case has a separate docket and treated as one. For the reporting period of July to September 2024, there had been 13 incidents of multiple murders recorded. In one incident, eight people were killed, in another, five people were murdered and three in the other incident. The other ten incidents had two people murdered in each incident. In total, 31 people were killed in these thirteen multiple murder incidents.
It is worth noting that sexual offences were reduced by 3.5% and this is despite the challenges that are associated with the prevention of this crime. Sexual offence incidents often occur in private residences or where the victims and perpetrators are in some kind of a relationship or are known to each other. For the period under review, reported rape cases were reduced by 2.9%. Out of the 539 reported cases 270, which is 50% of the cases, occurred at residences, either of the victim or the perpetrator.
In an attempt to address these types of crime, multidisciplinary social crime prevention programmes have been initiated, which include encouraging victims of GBV&F to speak up. Crimes against women and children remains the priority of the police as part of the government gender based violence and femicide implementation plan. For this reporting period, fewer incidents of murder of children were recorded while incidents of murder of women remain comparatively high. This is a further testament of the moral depravation that permeates the family values and social fabric. This unfortunately is against the objectives of the National Development Plan which emphasizes that all people including women and children are equal and free like everybody else to live their lives unimpeded.
Policing alone will not be able to address this phenomenon but we need to restore our family values which focuses on respecting people irrespective of religious, gender or any other differences between us as human beings.
Impressively stock theft has decreased by 6.1% though there are some areas where this crime is still stubbornly high. Taung and Pudimoe, both in Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District, remain the Province’s problematic areas with both stations ranked number 7 and 23 respectively in the country.
We recorded a remarkable 16.4% of crimes detected and prevented as a result of police action. The target for police detection of illegal possession of firearms and ammunition was however not met.
This remains a challenge especially because many of the reported serious and violent crimes such as robbery aggravated and murder are committed with firearms. It is important for the police intelligence and the community including community poling forums to work together to reduce the prevalence of illegal firearms.
There are a variety of factors that contribute to the high levels of crime. These factors which require a multi-disciplinary approach include proliferation of illegal firearms and dangerous weapons. The other socioeconomic factor is the expansion of informal settlements with spatial development by municipalities. The other problem which exacerbates informal settlement is the influx of undocumented persons. For instance, North West does not share borders Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Lesotho. But curiously, some arrested suspects of the murder, damage to infrastructure, illegal mining and stock theft are by undocumented nationals from these countries.
I will now hand over to General Patrick Asaneng to lead the presentation of the statistics.
ENDS!!!
