Latest crime stats no success story

Whenever the police minister delivers his quarterly crime statistics you know it is never going to be good news.

One life lost to crime is one too many – and daily we lose a lot more than that. In fact, in South Africa, three people are murdered per hour.

That’s more than 70 a day, and over 2,100 a month. No police minister, let alone citizen in this country, can be happy with that.

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Just how appalling these stats are, is shown when considering that more South Africans were murdered in the past three months than civilians killed in the Ukraine war over six months.

According to the United Nations, 5,401 civilians were killed there between 4 February and 7 August, while 6,424 people were murdered in SA from April to June.

In short, SA is worse than living in a war zone.

While there may be a decrease in sexual offences – rape, sexual assault, attempted sexual offences and contact sexual offences – year on year, 9,516 rape cases had still been reported to police from April to June.

That’s almost 10,000 cases. And those are only the reported cases. Many rapes are not reported.

Other shocking statisticss reveal that in the last quarter, 855 women and 243 children were killed in South Africa, and more than 11,000 assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm (GBH) cases involved female victims.

LISTEN: Violent crimes increase on a yearly basis in South Africa – Crime stats analysis

A further 1,670 such cases involved children. It’s sickening to think this is how we must live.

Action Society’s Ian Cameron said: “We have a murder conviction rate of less than 20%. How do these leaders stay in power when the people are dying at that rate?

“I don’t know why the minister is coming across as having all these successes because this is horrific and probably the worst murder stats we’ve had in over a decade. Things are not looking good.”

Cameron’s right. Things are certainly not looking good. The government is failing its people.