The quarterly crime statistics – for the period January to March 2022 – show no relief for KwaZulu-Natal’s (KZN) citizens when it comes to the provision of safer communities as serious crimes including murder, rape, gender-based violence (GBV), LGBTIQ-related crime, taxi violence and other priority crimes continue to increase.
KZN remains the murder capital of the country with three of the province’s SAPS stations – Umlazi, Inanda and Plessislaer – again recording the highest number of murders. This while the province also has seven SAPS stations ranked in the top 30 stations country-wide when it comes to contact crime.
Further statistics show that Durban Central is one of the most dangerous places in the country, coming in third highest in terms of serious crime, with an 11.9% – 2 037 cases – since the same period last year. Phoenix SAPS has also been flagged for contact crime and is now ranked at seventh in South Africa– with a 26.6% increase in contact crime from the last quarter.
Other KZN crime statistics compared with the same quarter in 2021 show that;
• Serious crime is up by 7.5%
• Attempted murder is up by a whopping 33%
• Assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm is up by 14.3%
• Rape is up 17.1% – 295 cases – to 2 017 incidents reported
• Contact crime is up by 15. 6%
• Kidnapping is up by 99.7% with 703 cases reported
• Car hijackings are up by 14.2% – from 767 during the first quarter last year last year to 876
• Cash-in-transit crime has increased and;
• Residential robbery increased with the highest number of reports from Plessislaer, Inanda and KwaDukuza
These statistics show that no one – in particular our women and children – are safe in KZN. Sadly, the same is true of our men and women in blue, with the province recording the highest number of police officers murdered during the first quarter.
The DA has warned KZN’s ANC-run leadership on numerous occasions that it is only a matter of time before the province’s people start to rise up and protect their own communities as a result of government’s failure to do so. When this happens, this provincial government will have no one to blame but themselves.
Despite the extremely serious situation on the ground, all our citizens hear about is crime summits, dialogues, secret memorandums on rural safety and empty promises to keep them safe. It is clear that these words are no more than hot air. These crime statistics are proof of this.
The time has come to insist that Premier, Sihle Zikalala and his Community Safety MEC, Peggy Nkonyeni are redeployed. It is clear that they are unable to deal with the out-of-control crime levels in our province and that they do not care about the safety of its people.