Cape Town – Many more South Africans were speaking out and reporting sexual offences to police, statistics showed the opposite in the Western Cape.
The Western Cape and Limpopo were the only provinces that recorded a decrease in victims approaching police to report sexual offences.
This emerged in the Victims of Crime report launched in Pretoria yesterday. Information in the report was extracted from the 2018/19 Governance, Public Safety and Justice
survey.
It found that the percentage of victims of sexual offences who reported at least one sexual offence incident was 88%, countrywide.
This was a dramatic increase from 73% in 2017/18, Statistics South Africa statistician-general, Risenga Maluleke said.
The chances of being robbed while walking in the street were highest in the Western Cape.
The report recorded 580 000 incidents of street robbery countrywide, with victims mostly men who were in the Metro. The most commonly used weapons during these robberies were knives at 62% and guns at 37%.
At least 1.3 million housebreakings were recorded across South Africa, with some households being hit more than once.
The survey found that only 48% of the incidents were reported to the police.
According to advocacy group Ilitha Labantu, which deals with sexual offences victims, some victims did not report the serious crime as they felt nothing would come of it.
“This goes back to the incompetence of the police to adequately deal with sexual violence,” Ilitha Labantu spokesperson Siya Monakali said.
“When we also follow up on the cases, we do sometimes find they were not properly recorded at the police station.
"For example a case would be written ‘other crime’ instead calling it what it is - ‘rape’.
"These are some of the issues that deter women from reporting,” said
Monakali.