DURBAN - MURDER and property-related crimes fluctuated in South Africa during the national lockdown from March 26 last year.
This was according to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) when they recently hosted a webinar on how the lockdown impacted crime trends.
The ISS unpacked the nature and dynamics of violence and crime over the past year.
ISS Crime Hub manager Lizette Lancaster said what was astonishing was the huge dip in murder during level 5 and 4 of the lockdown.
“Although there are other sustained decreases, overall we haven’t seen these huge decreases.”
She said they did see fluctuations and increases starting to emerge.
Lancaster said murder cases remained low during level 3 but increased the moment level 1 occurred.
“We started seeing increases, leading to decreases again in October, increases again in November as things opened up, decreases again under level 3 and level 1 in December. And quite substantive increases in February and March (2021),” said Lancaster.
She said there was the same sort of trend for carjackings. There were sustained, alarming increases from September to March, with a small dip in January (2021).
However, there was a sustained decrease in 2020 regarding property-related crimes between October and December.
Lancaster said residential robberies showed interesting trends as soon as levels opened up. There were increases and spikes just after level 3 lockdown.
“It’s encouraging that during the lockdown you have decreases in property-related crimes because movement has been restricted, you do see this impact; however, these are not sustainable because when we start looking at the levels of violence, we see that the levels remain extremely concerning.
“Although the lockdown, the movement restrictions, the curfews, closure of industries, had impact, those types of restrictions are not sustainable.”
Lancaster said instead, they started seeing increases in the levels of violence and that was because of the socio-economic strain placed on society because of the lockdown and its negative impact on jobs and on food security, for instance.
She added that police resources at the time were diverted to the implementation and enforcement of the Disaster Management Act and restrictions.
“As a result of the lockdown restrictions, organised crime managed to get a foothold in many communities and also in terms of new opportunities,” said Lancaster.
She felt this was a worrying trend.
ISS senior researcher Richard Chelin said when the country went into lockdown level 5, within days of the banning of alcohol and tobacco sales there was a flourishing business in illegal alcohol and cigarettes.
According to Chelin, this showed efficiency and adaptability of criminal networks to get their business rolling or venture into new products.
“As the ban started easing out, we saw a resumption of other forms of organised crime coming to the fore and we will likely see a trend increasing in the future as restrictions are further eased out as traffic slowly increases,” said Chelin.
He added that the crime statistics said very little about organised crime when it was delved into, which resulted in a situation where little was known about organised crime groups operating in the country and the type of crimes.
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