Durban - While Police Minister Nathi Nhleko welcomed successes by police during Friday’s crime statistics release, Durban citizens remain imprisoned in their homes and living in fear.
While statistics from April 1 to December 31, 2016, presented to Parliament were positive on a national level, with murder decreasing by 0.1%, contact crimes by 1.9% and sexual offences by 6.35%, those for KwaZulu-Natal remained grim for violent crimes. These include a 25% increase in carjackings, a 6.3% increase for robbery with aggravating circumstances and a 1.5% increase in murder.
On Friday, community policing forum leaders from Durban and outer suburbs were unimpressed with the crime figures, with Sydenham CPF communications officer Satish Dhuphelia saying residents never felt safe.
“The stats are interesting to read, but the reality on the ground is that people are scared in their homes, when at business and when they are driving. That means that almost all of the time, we have to be on the alert to avoid becoming a crime statistic, and that impacts on having a good life.
“People need a safe and secure environment and should not have to jail themselves in their homes and offices. The release of these stats does not alleviate the fear out there,” said Dhuphelia.
Kloof CPF chairman Morné Broodryk described the statistics as “a joke”.
“We know hijacking has gone through the roof. In Westville, robberies have doubled,” he said, adding that the way police categorised crime was confusing.
“When a guy breaks into a property with a firearm, breaks a window and sets off an alarm and then flees, I call it armed robbery. They call it attempted housebreaking.”
Westville CPF chairman Mike Myers said robberies had certainly increased but was reluctant to comment further, not having studied the statistics.
The secretary of the KwaMashu CPF, Londy Nzama, said co-operation between police and the CPF had made things better.
“But there is lots of robbery, rape and murder. The trouble often comes out of the taverns and also the container tuckshops and fruit and vegetable vendors who sell drugs,” said Nzama.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Dr Nirmala Gopal said the increase in the national statistics for robbery with aggravating circumstances, carjacking, robbery at residential premises and non-residential premises should be “of great concern for the country”.
“Evidence is increasingly showing that the socio-economic situation of many historically deprived communities is deteriorating and the probability of this being a push factor to criminal behaviour is high.
“Robbery could be a combination of issues of power and financial gain. South Africa continues to have legacies of unequal power relations and emasculation of men who find unorthodox ways to demonstrate their power. Robberies are a male-dominated crime.”
Gopal added that the category increases in KZN “warrant a specific type of intervention because it suggests that citizens are unsafe given the violent nature of these crimes”.
KZN crime monitor Mary de Haas said political killings ahead of the municipal elections last year would be included in the statistics, but the bigger issue was the number of guns in circulation.
“One has to ask, where are all the guns coming from? We have a very marginalised youth which is now being fuelled by drugs and guns. After the horrific killing of a family in uMlazi last week, which was preceded by an attack on people in a tavern, an uMlazi resident told me she hears (gun) shots frequently.