KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi explored the latest statistics and insights during a press briefing on Monday.
Image: Tumi Pakkies/ Independent Newspapers
In recent years, KwaZulu-Natal has witnessed a shift in its crime landscape. While the Covid-19 pandemic provided a brief respite from rampant criminal activities, the easing of restrictions has led to a resurgence in contact crimes.
KZN police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi revealed this at a press briefing on Monday.
Mkhwanazi said that in 2020, a total of 65,685 cases were registered, a number that has since skyrocketed to 88,000 in just the first nine months of the latest financial year. Many were in the form of assault. These assaults frequently occur in social settings where people have gathered for leisure and end up attacking one another.
“So, that - in terms of contact crime - remains the biggest contributor for us right across all these years,” Mkhwanazi said.
Looking at murder, Mkhwanazi said 3 501 murder cases were recorded in 2020, fast forward to 2024, to 4 278 cases.
“When we compare, we look at other years, also, not just in 2020 alone. So, if you look at our peak in terms of murder, where, in 2022 we started seeing a sharp increase in 2021 where we moved from 3 500 cases to 4 800 and it moved to 5 300 cases in 2022 and we then started seeing a decline of cases from 5 300 to 4 800 and it has gone down from 4 800 to 4 200 as we are counting, we have seen a reduction of 558 murder cases that have been registered in our province,” Mkhwanazi explained.
“This is a positive thing for us.”
On the sexual related cases, especially looking at cases of rape, sexual assaults and attempted sexual offenses, Mkhwanazi said: “While rape remains the biggest problem for us at the total, when we started in 2020 we registered more rape cases than we registered murders in 2020, 4 954 cases were recorded in 2020.
“But we’ve seen the increase on rape also in 2021 to 5 885 cases. Again, in 2022 still an increase of rape cases, up to 6 338 cases.
“We then started seeing a slight decline. But the decline is not to our satisfaction. It is a decrease, yes, but it’s not in relation to what we would want to see,” Mkhwanazi continued.
“In 2023 we had recorded 6 146 cases, which is a slight decrease in cases, and again, in the past nine months of last year, the first nine months of this current financial year, we started April to December last year, there are 6 000 cases that were recorded.
“It’s still a big number in relation to what we had recorded in 2020… 6 000 cases is still pretty much more than almost 5 000 cases that were recorded in 2020.”
Mkhwanazi said that despite the challenges faced with criminals and victims moving freely in society, and the increased opportunities for crime that arise as people go about their daily lives, they aim to reduce crime rates to the levels experienced in 2020.
Highlighting trio crime such as carjacking and robberies at residential and non-residential premises, Mkhwanazi said a total of these cases, in the main, were 7 823 and they increased in 2021 to 8 000 cases. In 2022, there were 10 000 cases and in 2023 they started dropping again through police interventions and many other counterparts that have been working well with police to try and reduce the crime. Currently, there are 7 855 cases.
Mkhwanazi said: “The biggest decrease that we are seeing is hijackings. In the year before 2023, we had 2 500 cases. It has gone down to 2 052 cases, which sees a reduction of 497 cases.
He said the concern with hijackings is that they often lead to other contact crimes, such as assault, attempted murder, and even murder.
thobeka.ngema@inl.co.za