Cape Town – The Free State has topped the list of safer provinces where contact crimes like murder, attempted murder and assault with intention to do grievous bodily harm, amongst others, have dropped.
The Western Cape is the most dangerous province in South Africa when it comes to contact crimes, followed by Limpopo, Gauteng and the North West.
This is according to national crime statistics for the period 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015 released by the South African Police Service to Members of Parliament in Cape Town on Tuesday.
“Four of the nine provinces recorded decreases in contact crimes during 2014/ 15, and those are Free State (-7.9%), Eastern Cape (-6.0%), KwaZulu-Natal (-3.2%) and the Northern Cape (-0.3%).
“The remaining provinces did not have a positive performance in this case,” National Police Commissioner General Riah Phiyega told Members of Parliament.
The Western Cape recorded the highest increase in contact crime (7.0%), with Limpopo seeing an increase of 5.6% and Gauteng 4.0%.
In the North West, contact crimes went up by 1.8%, while Mpumalanga recorded an increase of 0.3%.
While contact crimes decreased by a rate of 17.8% over the past ten years, they have gone up by a rate of 0.9% in the 2014/ 15 financial year.
With regard to contact related crimes like arson and malicious damage to property, the Western Cape province still topped the list, recording a 10.9% increase, followed by Limpopo (5.6% increase), the Northern Cape (4.0% increase), Mpumalanga (2.6% increase) and North West (0.5% increase).
In the same category, the Free State remained the best performing province, recording a -5.7% decrease, followed by the Eastern Cape (-4.0%) and KwaZulu-Natal (-2.5%).
Nationally, contact related crimes increased by a rate of 1.9%.
Under the property-related crimes category – that includes residential housebreaking, housebreaking at other premises, theft of motor vehicles, amongst others – the North West recorded the highest increase (3.3%), followed by the Northern Cape (1.1%).
Mpumalanga recorded an increase of 0.7%, while the Eastern Cape and Limpopo saw property-related crimes increasing by 0.6%, followed by Gauteng (0.5%).
The Free State recorded the highest decrease (-6.2%), followed by Western Cape (-2.8%) and KwaZulu-Natal (-1.6%).
Zooming in on murder, the National Commissioner told journalists during a media briefing after the release of the figures that Gauteng recorded the highest number of murders with 346 murder charges pressed at the province’s police stations.
The Western Cape was the second highest with 9.7% (282 murder charges), followed by Limpopo (6.7% increase) and KwaZulu-Natal with an increase of 5.4% (194 charges).
“Although the Western Cape is the fourth highest contributor with regards to the total number of charges recorded nationally, at 17.9%, 3186 charges, of the top 10 stations that are contributing to the highest number of murders, eight are from the Western Cape.”
She said the highest recorded was in Nyanga with 300 murder charges, followed by two KwaZulu-Natal stations - Inanda (179) and umlazi (170), seven in Gugulethu, Delft, Mfuleni, Khayelitsha, Harare, Kraaifontein and Mitchells Plein.
“So of the top ten contributing stations, eight come from the Western Cape so there are challenges there in terms of murder.” – SAnews.gov.za
