SA’s crime statistics for the period from January to March that were released by police minister Bheki Cele on Friday, show a sharp rise in business-related crimes, which negatively affects business confidence and investment in the country.
Cash-in-transit robberies went up 26.2%, truck hijackings 31.4%, carjacking 19.7% and commercial crime about 12%, and there were more bank robberies than in the last quarter of 2021.
The general crime situation deteriorated markedly quarter on quarter, with murders rising 22% to 6,083, rape 13.7% to 10,818 and crimes against people 15% to 157,907. All of this creates an environment in which potential investors do not want to live.
There were 53 (42) cash-in-transit robberies, 465 (354) truck hijackings, 5,402 (4,513) carjackings, five (one) bank robberies, and 25,431 (22,558) incidents of commercial crime.
The only positive trend was the 6.4% decline in burglaries of non-residential premises.
Business Unity SA CEO Cas Coovadia said the issue was of serious concern. “One of the things we are trying very hard on, with the government, is to attract investment and increase confidence in SA as a safe place to invest. These sort of increases in these kinds of crimes make it very difficult for us to do that.”
Other types of violent domestic and personal crime were also a concern, he said.
“One of the critical issues we raise with government is crime and law and order, and the fact that people are not held to account. There seems to be no downside for criminal activity. It is something that government needs to treat as a crisis. We urge them to respond with urgency to these issues,” said Coovadia.
The head of the Institute for Security Studies justice and violence prevention programme, Gareth Newham, said the big increases in business-related crimes were “quite astonishing”, adding that the overall crime situation was dire.
He said international investors were likely to note the murder rate in particular, as this is the most reliable indicator in terms of reportage to the police. SA’s murder rate is seven times higher than the global average.
DA police spokesperson Andrew Whitfield said the SA Police Service (SAPS) was “failing to protect SA’s economy from attack by violent criminals who operate in syndicates more organised than the SAPS.
“The crime statistics reveal that in spite of commitments to tackle syndicates involved in cash-in-transit heists, we have seen a massive spike in this crime category. An alarming new trend is bank robberies. The surge in bank robberies, together with the spike in cash-in-transit heists, should send alarm bells ringing within the SAPS. A strategy to tackle this trend is urgently required.”
With local and global supply chain challenges, the SAPS needed to go the extra mile to protect the logistics sector, which remained under threat, he said. The rise in carjackings and truckjackings indicated that SAPS visible policing had lost control of SA’s roads and highways, which were now patrolled by criminals.
He was particularly concerned about increasing incidents of vandalism and theft of critical public infrastructure, which was crippling businesses already on life support.
The DA had written to Cele to request that the SAPS treat this as a priority crime and establish a specialised unit to deal with it. Whitfield asked that the SAPS establish a reward hotline to report copper theft crime.
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