There is only one way to describe the second quarter of this year’s crime statistics: A bloodbath. And while Cele and his management seems content with 27 000 people dying in the slaughter house our country has become, it is ordinary South Africans who continue to fight for safer communities.
Violent crime incidents between July and September this year consisted of 6 945 murders, 6 911 attempted murders and 42 297 incidents of assault with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. Reported rape cases totaled 10 516 for the quarter while 13 090 sexual offences were reported.
“Children are most vulnerable,” says Ian Cameron, Director of Community Safety at Action Society. “Every day, four children narrowly escape death due to attempted murder and 20 children are assaulted with the intent to cause them grievous bodily harm. It is heartbreaking to know that we lost another 293 little children to murder in the second quarter of this year. Each one is a horror story in their own right. They are like little Mia Botha. She was just 4 years old when she was murdered in Paarl in the Western Cape in 2022. Her body was discovered on a school sports field, dumped like rubbish in a bag with plastic stuffed down her throat. The forensic evidence that the South African Police Service (SAPS) collected has not even been processed yet. Would Cele take child murders more seriously if we had him read their names instead of just reading statistics with his ‘it-is-what-it-is’ attitude?”
Violence against women painted an even darker picture than the first quarter with ten murders per day, 17 attempted murders per day and 160 cases of assault with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm reported per day in the second quarter of 2023. Sexual offense reports increased to 148 per day in the second quarter while rape cases increased to 119 per day. “That means there are one rape case reported every 12 minutes.”
Bheki Cele has been in office 66 months and only seemed to realise today that South Africans are living in fear. He has also started to blame mental health problems for crime. “The truth is that his incompetence is allowing the monsters that kill our women and children to walk free and children have a reason to be afraid of the dark. The crime pandemic and the mental health problems are of his making and there are solutions and plans that can make a huge difference in a very short amount of time. Cele isn’t willing or able to implement it and for that he must be fired.”
Image: GCIS Flickr
