SA crime stats: More murders in 3 months, than 6 months of Ukraine war deaths

More South Africans were murdered over the past three months than civilians killed in the Ukraine war over six months.

According to the United Nations (UN), 5 401 civilians were killed between 4 February and 7 August while 6 424 people were murdered in South Africa between April 2022 to June 2022.

Despite some of the first quarter of the 2022/2023 financial year crime statistics decreasing, 2141 murders were reported per month resulting in 71 murders committed daily and three murders per hour.

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Police minister e Bheki Cele said yesterday the first quarter of the 2022/2023 financial year showed a decrease in the total sexual offences such as rape, sexual assault, attempted sexual offences and contact sexual offences.

“This means there was a drop of over 800 cases of sexual offences that are far more often, perpetrated on women,” he said.

Cele said 9 516 rape cases were reported to police between April and June was almost 500 less rape cases reported compared to the same period last year.

“While rape cases declined in all provinces, the North West and Northern Cape provinces are the only provinces to report increases in this crime category,” he added.

“From April to June 855 women and 243 children were killed in South Africa,” he said.

More than 11 000 assault with intent to commit grievously bodily harm (GBH) cases involved female victims while and 1 670 such cases involved children.

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Cele added liquor was involved in 749 murder cases.

Action Society’s Ian Cameron described the latest quarterly crime stats as a blood bath disguised as progress.

Cameron said it was also the highest quarterly murder rate recorded in over a decade. “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? Something alarming is the increase of women.

“Ironically, they announce in Women’s month that murder of women over 18 years of age is up by 53% and assault GBH against women is also up by 54%. Murder on children went up by 46% and assault GBH on children up by 58%,” he said.

Cameron said the conviction rate was low considering the amount rapes that took place.

“There are more or less 120 rapes a day, those are only the ones reported. In terms of 3172 rapes reported a month, it’s 106 rapes per day and 4.4 rapes per hour we know of,” he said.

Cameron added it was worrisome that over 11 000 cases of GBV against women were reported over three months.

READ MORE: Bheki Cele tells SA just how bad crime really is

“Assault GBH is an important indicator because it was often an attempted murder case because it’s the intention of possibly killing someone,” he explained.

Cameron said Cele’s comment about the conviction increase was ridiculous.

“The sexual conviction rate was still less than 6% in South Africa. That means out of 100 prosecutions, only six were convicted successfully. In murders, we have less than a 20% successful conviction rate.

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

Victimologist from the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Limpopo Professor Jaco Barkhuizen said the decrease in some of the crimes reported was not because of better policing.

“If it was due to better policing, all crime stats would have decreased but murder and rape are up,” he said.

Barkhuizen said he was most shocked about the 19 murders and 67 rapes recorded at schools.

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