Opposition parties have lamented the increases in crime — particularly house robberies — detailed in the latest statistics for April to September, which were released on Thursday.
It was deplorable and made a mockery of Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula’s assurances to business leaders, locally an overseas, that the crime rate was under control, Democratic Alliance spokesperson Diane Kohler-Barnard said.
House robbery — house break-ins that included violence — increased by 7%, truck hijacking by 53,3 % and business robbery by 29,3%.
The police say incidents such as murder — which was down by 6,6% — rape, attempted murder and assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm had decreased over the past six months.
”This may be the case, but it is important never to lose sight of the fact that a high number of cases are never reported to the police,” Kohler-Barnard said.
By focusing exclusively on dropping or rising crime statistics over fixed periods of time, the South African Police Service (SAPS) failed to address the very real issue that a significant portion of the population did not even report crimes.
”Indeed, according to the AC Nielsen crime survey, 32% of crime victims interviewed failed to report the crime to the police, with 61% of those victims stating ‘police inefficiency’ as the reason.”
The last Victims of Crime Survey stated that the reporting rate of crime was less than half of all crimes committed, Kohler-Barnard said.
Freedom Front Plus spokesperson Pieter Groenewald agreed, saying the statistics proved the public was not safe because of crime.
Last year there was an increase of 25,4% in house robberies and it now appeared to still be increasing.
President Thabo Mbeki’s view that people were complaining unnecessarily about crime and it was merely a perception created by the media had now been proven to be wrong.
”People are supposed to feel safe in their own homes but the statistics indicate that it is increasingly unsafe in one’s own home.”
The public was therefore justified in complaining that crime was getting out of control and that South Africa was unsafe to live in, Groenewald said.
Velaphi Ndlovu of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) also expressed alarm at the big increases in house robbery, business robbery and truck hijacking.
”It proves that the SAPS are not utilising resources to target priority crimes,” he said.
Hopefully, with the more frequent release of the crime statistics, the SAPS would now be able to use their resources to target the crime hot spots, as well as those crimes continuing to increase.
”The latest figures underline the IFP’s stance that the government is in denial about crime and regardless of their claims that crime is decreasing, the same is not being felt or experienced by communities and people at grassroots level,” Ndlovu said.
‘Weaknesses’
Meanwhile, there were ”weaknesses” in the criminal justice system that needed serious attention, Nqakula also said on Thursday.
These included the granting of bail to people arrested for serious crimes despite police objections, he said in reply to questions.
”There are these people they have arrested suddenly waking the streets.”
A case in point was the recent arrest of 22 people in KwaZulu-Natal for alleged involvement in cash-in-transit heists.
Seven of them were out on bail, even though some of them were linked to three different cases.
”In these circumstances, you don’t expect such people to be granted bail,” said Nqakula. — Sapa