Nyanga remains South Africa's murder capital with 10 other police stations in the Western Cape among the top 30 with the highest murder rates, the annual crime statistics, released in Parliament on Thursday, revealed.
According to the statistics, the Nyanga police station recorded 289 murders (down 6.2 percent from the previous year) between April 1 last year and March 31 this year, followed by Delft with 247 (up 26.7%) and Khayelitsha with 221 (up 15.1%).
Overall, South Africa's murder rate increased by 3.4 percent, meaning 57 people are murdered daily, and sexual assault crimes increased by 4.6 percent in the past financial year. The country records twice as many rape cases - 113.9 - on average a day as murders.
Police Minister Bheki Cele conceded that the figures "do not look good" and said police would work to halve violent crime within less than the 10-year deadline set by Ramaphosa.
"From this department, we believe that ten years is too long to achieve this," the minister said.
Last year, Cele said he was putting the heads of the SA Police Service (SAPS) management team on the block following drastic increases in the number of murders. When asked if any heads would roll this year, Cele backtracked, ruling this out. He took a more optimistic approach, saying while the murder rate had seen another increase, it was not as steep as last year.
Police Minister Bheki Cele and his Deputy Cassel Mathale.
Photo: Chantall Presence / ANA
"In the previous financial year, the number of murders increased by 1,320, that figure was halved in the financial year 2018/19 to 686. This means the rate of increase is slowing down," he said.
Some 60 percent of murders happened over weekends, which suggested that these were fueled by alcohol and drug abuse.
Cele said a very high number of murder victims were killed by people who they knew, hence these were not murders that may have been prevented by better policing.
"It will be very difficult for the police to police such cases where people know each other."
The total number of sexual offences stood at 52,420 (up 4.6%), while attempted murder cases stood at 18,980 (up 4.1%), 170,979 cases of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm were reported (up 2.2%), while common assault stood at 162,012 cases recorded (up 3.7%).
More South Africans were also victims of robbery with aggravating circumstances and common robbery, with a 1.2 % and 2 percent increase, respectively.
There were decreases across the board for some subcategories of aggravated robbery, including for carjackings (down 1.8%), business robberies (down 1.3%), cash in transit robberies (down 23.1%), bank robberies (down 69.2%), and truck hijacking (1.7%). Robberies at residential premises however saw an increase of 0.8 percent.
African News Agency (ANA)