Criminals declare war on South Africans

Dear Editor

The quarterly crime statistics released by Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, earlier today paint a bloody picture of violence tearing away at our social fabric while our citizens cower in fear in their own homes.

The Minister of Police is presiding over an impotent police service which has resulted in 6 289 people being violently murdered while 164 206 people were victims of contact crimes between 1 January 2023 and 31 March 2023. This equates to 70 Murders a day and one contact crime committed every 50 seconds of every day.

In these 90 days of violence, a shocking 146 people a day were also sexually assaulted which equates to 6 people every hour, or 1 person every 10 minutes that is subjected to the trauma of sexual assault in South Africa.

The 51.2% spike in kidnappings over the last quarter points to a failure of crime intelligence and a well-entrenched culture of impunity among criminals who no longer fear consequences for their criminal actions.

Criminals have declared war on the people of South Africa. Crime is spiralling out of control while Minister Cele and the SAPS have not demonstrated any ability to take the fight to violent criminals and reverse the upward trend in the crime statistics. Criminals are now brazenly killing police officers and attacking police stations while the Minister sits on his hands.

The crime statistics expose the government as being soft on crime and softer on the causes of crime while criminals are winning the war:

• 6 192 Attempted murders (up 8.3% and almost identical to the number of actual murders)
• 49 226 Assaults (547 per day which means 1 person is assaulted every 3 minutes)
• 663 Attempted Sexual Assaults (up 21.2%)
• 11 744 Common Robberies (up 8.9%)
• 64 Cash in Transit heists (up 20.8%)
• 5 578 Robberies in households (62 every day which is up 6%)
• 15 980 Burglaries of people’s businesses (up 12.2%)
• 7 107 Driving under the influence (up 40.7% which shows that people do not fear the police)

The Western Cape as a whole saw a decrease in murder of 14.1% from last year’s Q4 (highest decrease in SA) and has now dropped below KZN, Gauteng and EC in murder numbers.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) together with various civil society organisations have called for the incompetent Bheki Cele to be fired as Police Minister, yet he is still shielded at every turn by President Ramaphosa.

In 2019, Ramaphosa said in his State of the Nation Address that he aims to halve violent crimes in 10 years. Almost halfway through this period, it appears that violent crime has doubled under his watch. His refusal to fire Bheki Cele now directly implicates him in this violence. These crime statistics will only continue to get worse and worse every single quarter until we put a stop to it.

This is the time for South Africans to stand up and unite against the worst cadre deployment of all. If Ramaphosa will not remove Cele, then we must remove them all.

It is therefore critical to make sure you are registered to vote in 2024, either at www.da.org.za/registertovote or on the voter registration weekend being held on 18/19 November 2023.

Regards

Andrew Whitfield MP
DA Shadow Minister of Police