Acting Minister Firoz Cachalia: Release of the third quarter crime statistics

Deputy Minister of Police, Dr Polly Boshielo,
Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mr Andries Nel,
National Commissioner of the South African Police Service, General Fannie Masemola,
Acting Deputy National Commissioners present, Lt General Senthumule and Lt General Nkhuoa,
Divisional Commissioners,
Gauteng Provincial Commissioner, Lt General Mthombeni,
Representatives from the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service and IPID and DPCI,
Major General Thulare Sekhukhune,
the SAPS Crime Registrar,
Senior SAPS Managers,
Members of the media,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon to you all.

Introduction

Three months ago, on 28 November, I released the crime statistics for the 1st and 2nd quarter of the current financial year from 1 April to 30 September 2025.

Today I will share the results of the 3rd quarter, for the period 1 October to 31 December 2025. The decision to publicly release crime statistics every quarter is a demonstration of this government’s commitment to transparency and accountability.

Our people are entitled to know how many crimes are reported to the South African Police Service (SAPS) on a regular basis, different categories are showing an increase, or decrease in the precincts where communities live.

We share this information so that communities, businesses, and public service departments will have a sense of what is happening in their neighbourhoods in terms of crime and related risks. Knowledge is power and enables better and more effective collective action to improve public safety.

Last week, we heard during the State of the Nation Address, that the President has centered public safety, with a particular focus on tackling organised crime and gender-based violence at the forefront of this government’s agenda in the coming year.

I gave further details as to our approach and what we practically hope to achieve during my speech before parliament as part of the debate on SONA and will reemphasise some of this today, as part of the release of the latest crime statistics.

National Trends

Overall, the sense of cautious optimism in relation to overall national crime trends that I referred to last year remains. Most violent crime categories, including murder, rape, robbery and most property related crimes like theft and burglary continued to decrease, but remain at unacceptably high levels.

After more than a decade of annual increases, murder, our most accurate crime statistic started decreasing on the first quarter of 2023-24. This trend has continued throughout this year with this quarter showing a 8,7 decrease or 602 fewer lives lost.

This means that over the past two years, the numbers of murders for the quarter 3 Period (1 October to 31 December) had dropped by 17,6% or 1 359 fewer murders.

Total contact crime made up of all categories of violent crime started to decrease in the 3rd quarter of 2024-25. During this quarter, total violent crime decreased again by 6,7% or 12 682 fewer cases reported to the SAPS when compared to the same quarter last year. Over the past two years, total violent crime for this quarter is down by 8,3% or 15 763 fewer cases. This trend may well be attributable to enhanced policing operations.

But despite these welcome national trends, the levels of crime remain unacceptably high. The crime situation also varies substantially across the country. Remember that these are statistical, patterns.

While most communities have recorded a decrease in violent and property crimes, there are still too many communities that have recorded increases. This does not necessarily translate into a felt sense of security by individuals, families and communities.

For example, while we have seen double digit reductions in murder in five provinces namely KwaZulu Natal, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State and the North West, much smaller decreases were recorded in the Western and Eastern Cape, with slight increases recorded in Limpopo and the Northern Cape. And out of the 30 highest murder precincts, decreases were recorded in only 15 of them. The killings relating to gang violence in the Eastern and Western Cape in particular, remain worrisomely high.

For this quarter, I am deeply concerned with the notable increase in the murder of police officials. Almost 80% of the 23 police officials who lost their lives were off-duty.

This is an issue that I will ask SAPS management to look into so that we can try and prevent these deaths from happening.

Again, firearms remain the single largest weapon driving murder, robbery and organised crime in our country. As the President noted in his SONA speech, we will be taking additional measures to address this scourge with a focus on removing illegal firearms and preventing legal firearms from falling into the wrong hands.

The classification of Gender Based Violence and Femicide (GBV+F) as a national disaster demands that we intensify our efforts to deal with this. Much inter-personal, domestic and Gender-Based violence takes place between people who live with each other or know each other.

We are taking steps to strengthen the policing approach to addressing GBV+F and other forms of violence. For example, the SAPS has allocated an additional 999 police members to the Detective Services over the past year.

While we work to improve law-enforcement, we also need to give attention to implementing the Integrated Crime and Violence Strategy (ICVPS.) This requires that different social departments such as health, education and social development to align their services across levels of government to mitigate the factors that drive crime and violence so that it can be prevented from happening.

I will be hosting a meeting of all the Provincial Heads of Community Safety, including some Premiers called the MinMec On the 6th of March. This meeting is important to ensure that we align the operations of the National, Provincial and Local governments in implementing the ICVPS in the high-crime precincts across all provinces.

We also need to ensure that communities are supported with their local level programmes to improve public safety. However, this has to be done within the law.

Where communities take the law into their own hands, resulting in murders and assaults, this creates further work for an already overstretched police service.

We will therefore be looking at re-invigorating community-policing by establishing a national community-patroller programme that will run in each province. I have tasked the Civilian Secretariat for Police to develop the concept and funding model, with the objective of enabling community members to receive training and stipends to assist with improving safety in their localities. They will not be undertaking policing functions but be deployed to ensure that there are people who can call the police and through their presence prevent crime from happening in places such as transport nodes, walkways, around schools and other places where there are safety challenges.

Tackling Organised Crime

As the President clearly stated last week, in the SONA last week, “Organised Crime is now the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and economic development.”

As I have mentioned before, most organised crime is not recorded in the crime statistics. Most extortion of small businesses is not reported to the police nor is most corruption and fraud in the public and public and private sectors will not be found in these statistics.

Nevertheless, the impact of these crimes is real and severely damaging for our country.

When public funds are stolen at a large scale, we feel it in various ways. Local level organised corruption in tendering and the copper cable theft syndicates contribute to water and electricity outages that cause havoc to our lives.

The quality of crucial public services such as education, health care and transport, is undermined when the public funds allocated for these services is stolen. In the private sector, the cost of goods and services increase as private companies charge more to make up for losses in stock or fraud, or incur additional security costs to prevent becoming victims to syndicated crime.

As the Madlanga Commission and Parliamentary Ad Hoc inquiries have shown, organised criminality has infiltrated our criminal justice system. We have already established a dedicated task team to investigate evidence of criminality against senior SAPS and Ekurhuleni local government officials that have been identified by the interim report of the Madlanga Commission as being part of criminal activities.

Our approach towards tackling organised crime needs to rely on two simultaneous approaches:

Firstly, we must identify those involved through vetting and lifestyle audits of our top ranks. Those who fraternise with criminals or involve themselves in criminality and corruption have no place in our criminal justice system. The SAPS top management echelon must consist only of experienced commanders of unquestionable integrity. We must establish an organisational culture characterised by professionalism, integrity and accountability throughout the organisation.

Secondly, organised crime is sophisticated, well-networked and enabled by professional lawyers and accountants. Specialised capabilities for identifying individuals and networks are being strengthened so that we can dismantle their operations, seize their resources and send those implicated to prison.

In the short-term where the effects of organised crime threaten lives and livelihoods such as gang violence and illegal mining, additional security resources will be enhanced by bolstering the Anti-Gang Units, deploying other specialised policing units and the SANDF.

Much attention has been given to the deployment of the SANDF. Many communities are in support of this intervention, but some commentators have expressed concern.

Let me be clear, this deployment is under-the command of the SAPS and in support of their operations in particular locations. Their role has been carefully defined to ensure area dominance and protection during high‑risk operations; support to cordon‑and‑search in dangerous zones; and protection of critical infrastructure and key routes. It is time bound and aimed at stabilising situations where people are losing their lives on a daily basis.

Conclusion

While the national trends for most violent and property crime continue to head in the right direction, crime remains unacceptably high and continues to devastate many lives and communities. We therefore still have a long journey to travel. But, I promise that we will not give up. By adopting a whole of government and whole of society approach, together we can make South Africa a safer place. This is a priority, and is achievable.

I thank you.

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