Police Minister, General Bheki Cele, says violent crimes against women and children remain high in the country. Cele presented the quarterly crime statistics in Pretoria.
This reflects on crimes reported to the South African Police Services from 1st of July to 30 September 2022. Violence has also come at a cost for the police with 22 of their colleagues having lost their lives during this period.
The crime figures are compared to the same period in 2021, when the country was still under Lockdown due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Police Minister, Bheki Cele, says the rate at which women and children are abused, violated and some killed in South Africa remains worrying and unacceptable. Cele briefed the media in Pretoria.
“Over 13 000 women were victims of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm between July and September 2022. 1 277 women were victims of attempted murder, and 989 women were murdered during this reporting period. Over 10 000 rape cases were opened with the SAPS, between July and September this year from a sample of 8 227 rape incidents that were perused.”
According to Cele, it was determined that 5083 of these incidents occurred at the residence of the victims or perpetrators. He says murder and assault cases are a growing concern. “Six-thousand-662 assault GBH cases were domestic violence related. This means the perpetrator and victim had some type of domestic relations. 7 004 people were killed by other people in the second quarter of 2021/22.”
Mpumalanga reports less rape cases
Mpumalanga is the only province to report a decrease in rape incidents. But, this is not the case with KwaZulu- Natal, Eastern Cape and Western Cape.
“Inanda, Umlazi police station in KwaZulu-Natal, and Nyanga police station in the Western Cape registered the highest counts of murder during this period. A total of 274 counts of murder were reported in those three areas combined. Fighting crime was also not easy as we lost 22 of our members during the same period last year.”
Police say there has been a significant progress towards ending the DNA backlog at their forensic service laboratories. Cele says this has assisted a great deal in expediting prosecution of GBV cases, among others.
“Let us talk a little bit about this DNA. The prioritisation of court ready cases where there are outstanding forensic reports continue to gain momentum. Teams from the SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) are working together with agility and have, to date, processed 17 410 court ready Gender Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) cases. This is an increase of over 5 000 cases since the last crime statistics were released in August,” adds Cele.
The crime statistics also indicated that about 558 children were killed in the country from April to the end of September this year. Police are investigating attempted murder dockets of 294 children and a further 1 895 assault GBH cases with children being the most victims.
