Pretoria - Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant-General Elias Mawela has warned that the rising protests against illegal foreigners in the province are diverting the the SAPS’s mission to fight serious crime.
Mawela expressed these sentiments when tabling Gauteng's crime statistics for the period April to June this year before the portfolio committee on community safety at the provincial legislature sitting at Etwatwa, Daveyton, yesterday.
The commissioner’s concern came as members of Operation Dudula visited health centres such as the Kalafong Provincial Tertiary Hospital in Atteridgeville, while others were at the Hillbrow Community Health Centre in Johannesburg demanding that patients dubbed illegal foreigners should be denied medical attention.
The call also came after Gayton McKenzie – leader of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) – vowed to remove oxygen from an illegal immigrant to save the life of a South African citizen.
While all this was happening, Mawela warned that their actions, whether violent or not, ate into the budget of the police as they had to prevent attacks against individuals who were perceived to be illegal immigrants.
“The ever-rising anti-foreigner sentiments remain a high security threat to the domestic stability in the province. This threat requires a focused and aggressive social cohesion programmes to mitigate.
“Lastly, social ills such as substance abuse, moral degeneration and socio-economic factors continue to be the underlying causative factors to the contact crimes,” Mawela said.
Despite the gloomy picture, he was able to congratulate the police for their efforts in the drastic reduction of sexual offences, including rape, residential and business robberies, as well as contact crimes.
However, he expressed concern about the spike in cash-in-transit heists, murders and kidnappings.
Mawela said sexual offences remained a concern for them, irrespective of the current reduction or whether the numbers rose or dropped, saying that they reiterated their resolve to fight this category with everything at their disposal.
“For the quarter April to June, we have observed an 8.2% reduction, which translates to 217 counts less in comparison with the same period in 2021/2022.”
He said the reduction may be attributed to, among others, collaboration and partnerships with communities and NGOs, the conviction rate on sexual offences where for the quarter under review they achieved a combined 29 life-term imprisonment sentences and an additional 931 years in sentences.
“The unit has made a total of 655 arrests specifically for rape for the period under review.”
While incidents of murder had increased, Mawela said that during the period under review 293 more murder incidents were reported in Gauteng, which reflected an increase of 24.5%.
Of 1 490 people who were killed, 155 were women and 50 were children.
Furthermore, a total of 34 cases of murder registered during the same period were related to domestic violence, with 18 female and 16 male victims.
“A further analysis on the murders that we have recorded in the province has revealed what we already knew, that firearms are frequently used as instruments of choice to commit murder. Out of 1 490 cases of murder reported, a firearm was used 697 times,” he said.
Mawela blamed the violent murders on the proliferation of guns, saying: “The province continues to experience multiple murders in one incident, resulting in a high number of murders. For the period under review (there are) 75 case dockets with 175 victims.
“As a province, we have lost two police officers in the line of duty, while two were killed off-duty.”
He said there was an increase in robbery with aggravating circumstances, with a rise of 5.6% – 701 more cases – compared to last year.
Mawela said cash-in-transit heists accounted for 50% of the crimes.
Also worrying was the significant rise in kidnappings in the province, he said.
“This quarter, there were 1 100 more incidents of kidnappings as compared to the same period in the last financial year.
“Hijackings remain the top causative factor as reflected by an analysis from a sample of 1 902 cases of kidnappings, where 1113 of those resulted from hijackings.
“Hijackings are followed by robbery-related cases at 242, taxi-related at 110, retaliation/revenge at 83 and rape-related at 81,” he said.
Pretoria News