By Shaun Smillie and Siyabonga Mkhwanazi
Organised crime is playing catch-up for all the money it missed out on stealing over those months of Covid-19 lockdown when everyone was forced to stay at home.
The evidence, according to the Minister of Police Bheki Cele, lies in the increased numbers of house robberies, hijackings, cash-in-transit robberies and truck hijackings.
“The scramble to ‘catch up’ by criminals is also reflecting in the increase of cash-in-transit heist figures,” the minister said yesterday. “It is clear armed gangs targeting cash vans are becoming more desperate and ruthless as the year comes to a close.”
The minister was speaking at the release of the crime statistics for the second quarter.
South Africa, the statistics revealed, is still experiencing the back end of a crime holiday brought on by the nearly eight months of lockdown. Crime is still down when compared with previous years, but is on the rise.
Gauteng in that period saw a 2% increase in house robberies, a 5% rise in carjackings and a doubling of cash-in-transit incidents that rose 107%, compared with the same quarter last year. Truck hijackings rose by 52%.
“So after five month notable double digit decreases, suddenly you see in September notable increases,” said Gareth Newham, the head of the Governance, Crime and Justice Division at the Institute of Security Studies.
“That suggests that these groups are becoming much more active and are trying to make up for the cash they lost in the last five months during a lockdown period. If they can't move around, they feel the pinch, like we do.”
Newham warned that this was a trend that the country would likely see rise as it heads into the festive season.
There was some good news revealed in the statistics, which was attributed to the continuing effects of the lockdown.
Cele said 5 107 people had been killed, but this was a decline of 339 (f 6.2%) compared with the previous period last year.
He said sexual offences declined by 16.8%and sexual offences dropped from 13 730 to 11 430.
Gauteng saw a decrease of 10% in murders. Sexual offences fell by 12%.
However Newham was concerned by the increase in murder over September across South Africa.
“So in September, there was a 9.6% increase in murders (nationally) which is very noticeable, and it is rare to have such a big increase. As the lockdown levels decreased and people began to move around, crime began to gear up again.”
However, Cele said he was concerned about gender-based violence cases. Parliament was in the process of amending GBV laws to tighten measures. The justice committee had said it wanted to finalise GBV laws by the end of the year.
Cele said when he presented the crime statistics of the first quarter in August he spoke about “about a never-seen-before picture of a crime holiday.”
But the DA and IFP said despite the decline the numbers were still high.
DA MP Okkie Terblanche said the police still needed to do more. He said they needed to pull up their shocks because the numbers were still high.
Terblanche said they had a presentation from the police this week in the portfolio committee where they briefed MPs on the backlog in the DNA cases.
He said DNA evidence was crucial in court and if there was a backlog it impacts on criminal cases before the courts.
IFP MP Zandile Majozi also said despite the decline in these crimes, the numbers were still high.
“We welcome the report by the Minister but it does not take away the fears of South Africans in the murders and the brutality of the killing of women and children,” said Majozi.
She said the numbers may have been reduced, but they want a zero tolerance on these crimes.
She said the police would have to do a proper job when collecting evidence at the crime scene.
Majozi said the nature of violent crime in South Africa left many questions than answers.
“We need to find out what is wrong, why are people killing each other and there is so much gender-based violence.”