BONUS - STILFONTEIN - During a media presentation on Thursday, 12 December 2024, MEC for the North West Department of Community Safety and Transport Management, Wessels Morweng made public the 2024/2025 second quarter crime statistics.
The event was attended by the Deputy Provincial Commissioner, General Asaneng, SAPS Officers, Acting Chief Director for Civilian Secretariat, Dikeledi Letsapa and other senior managers and officials of the Department.
MEC Morweng had the following to say: "The trend for the crime statistics released in September 2024, highlighted the disturbing pattern of 85 police stations in the province consistently and constantly appearing in the in the Top 30 reporting crimes in the country. Though at the time, it was pleasing to note a significant 4.3% drop of sexual offences, it was equally depressing to note an incredible 20.3% increase of murder cases.
"For the July to September 2024 reporting period, the picture has improved slightly due to intensive and incessant work by the police. Even with that, it is worrying that there are still areas where crime remains unacceptably high - community reported crimes decreased by 3.3%. Contact crimes, which generally are a challenge, were reduced by 1.7% and this is due to the nominal increases of some crimes, such as murder which increased by 4.2%, attempted murder by 8.2% and common robbery by 5.7%.
"The reason why there appears to be an exponential increase in murder, is due to the fact that each case has a separate docket and is treated as one.
"It is worth noting that sexual offences were reduced by 3.5% - this despite the challenges that are associated with the prevention of this crime. Sexual offence incidents often occur in private residences or where the victims and perpetrators are in some kind of a relationship or are known to each other.
“For the period under review, reported rape cases were reduced by 2.9%. Out of the 539 reported cases 270, which is 50% of the cases, occurred at residences, either of the victim or the perpetrator.
"In an attempt to address these types of crime, multidisciplinary social crime prevention programmes have been initiated. Crimes against women and children remains the priority of the police as part of the government gender-based violence and femicide implementation plan. For this reporting period, fewer incidents of murder of children were recorded while incidents of murder of women remain comparatively high. This is a further testament of the moral depravation that permeates the family values and social fabric. Policing alone will not be able to address this phenomenon, but we need to restore our family values which focuses on respecting people irrespective of religious, gender or any other differences between us as human beings.
"Impressively, stock theft has decreased by 6.1% though there are some areas where this crime is still stubbornly high.
"We recorded a remarkable 16.4% of crimes detected and prevented as a result of police action. The target for police detection of illegal possession of firearms and ammunition was however not met. This remains a challenge especially because many of the reported serious and violent crimes such as robbery (aggravated) and murder are committed with firearms.
"There are a variety of factors that contribute to the high levels of crime. These factors which require a multi-disciplinary approach include proliferation of illegal firearms and dangerous weapons. The other socioeconomic factor is the expansion of informal settlements with spatial development by municipalities. The other problem which exacerbates informal settlement is the influx of undocumented persons. Although North West does not share borders with Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, some arrested suspects of the murder, damage to infrastructure, illegal mining and stock theft are by undocumented nationals from these countries," Morweng concluded.
