Cape Town, South Africa – Statistics from the police show that more than 7,000 South Africans were murdered in the country between July 1st and September 30th.
This indicates an increase compared to the same time last year according to the crime statistics from the South African Police Service (SAPS) to the South African parliamentary portfolio committee.
The quarterly data revealed that murder instances in the country had risen by 14 percent during the three months compared to the same time in 2021, when 6,163 people were murdered.
More than 1,000 women were murder victims, with an excess of 13,000 victims of assault to cause serious bodily harm, while another 1,277 had reported attempted murder.
The Police Minister Bheki Cele said, “The rate at which women are abused, violated and some killed in South Africa remains worrying and unacceptable.”
The statistics also painted a grim picture of kidnappings in the country, which had doubled to more than 4,000 cases compared to the same period in 2021.
More than 10,000 kidnapping incidents were reported, an 11 percent increase from the previous year. There was also a 24 percent increase in carjackings to a record 6,000.
The Police Minister also raised concern that the most vulnerable groups in society were the primary victims of violent crimes, which showed a failure by communities to protect them. Over 550 children were murdered between April and September 2022.
The Police Minister has pledged to deploy 10,000 new police recruits during this year’s festive season. South Africa’s most prominent labor confederation, COSATU, lamented that its membership had reduced by 30,000 in the past decade.
Andrew Whitfield urged the president to fire the ‘incompetent’ Police Minister as the crime was getting out of hand.
