Police Minister General Bheki Chele says violent crime against women and children in the country remains high. Chele presented the quarterly crime statistics in Pretoria.
This represents crimes reported to the South African police between July 1 and September 30, 2022. The violence also cost the police, with 22 of their colleagues killed during that period.
The crime figures are compared to the same period in 2021, when the country was still in lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Police Minister Bheki Chele says the incidence of abuse, violence and deaths of women and children in South Africa remains alarming and unacceptable. Chele briefed the media in Pretoria.
“More than 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. More than 10,000 rape cases were opened by the SAPS between July and September this year, out of a sample of 8,227 rape cases that were reviewed.”
According to Chele, 5,083 of those incidents were found to have occurred at the residence of the victims or perpetrators. He says incidents of murder and assault are a growing concern. “Six thousand 662 cases of GBH assault were related to domestic violence. This means that there was some kind of domestic relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. 7,004 people were killed by other people in the second quarter of 2021/22.”
Mpumalanga reports fewer rapes
Mpumalanga is the only province that reported a decrease in rape. But this is not the case with KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape.
“Inanda, Umlazi Police Station in KwaZulu-Natal and Nyango Police Station in the Western Cape recorded the highest number of murders during the period. A total of 274 murders were reported in these three districts. Fighting crime has also not been easy as we lost 22 of our members in the same period last year.’
Police say significant progress has been made in clearing the DNA backlog at their forensics labs. Cele says this has helped greatly in speeding up the prosecution of GBV cases, among others.
“Let’s talk a little bit about that DNA. The priority of court-ready cases, on which there are unresolved conclusions of forensic examinations, continues to gain momentum. Teams from SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) work together and have processed 17,410 gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) cases ready for trial to date. This is an increase of more than 5,000 cases since the last crime statistics were released in August,” Cele adds.
Crime statistics also showed that between April and the end of September this year, around 558 children were killed in the country. Police are investigating the attempted murders of 294 children and a further 1,895 cases of GBH involving children.
