A total of 1 721 people were murdered in Gauteng in a period of three months with Johannesburg Central taking the lead. This is a 9.6 % increase from the previous year in the same period. Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant General Elias Mawela said most people in the province are being murdered with guns with the second preferred murder weapon being a knife. Mawela presented the quarterly crime statistics on Tuesday.

INCREASE IN RAPE CASES 

 There has also been an increase in rape cases with 2033 cases reported between 1 October to 31 December 2022, and 860 of the cases were reported against children. That’s an increase of 9% from previous year. “Remember that behind every number there is a victim and that's worrying,” Mawela said. Attempted sexual assaults cases increased by 26.2% in the third quarter of 2022 as compared to the same period in 2021.

?MOB JUSTICE 

Over 100 people died in the hands of their community members through mob justice.

This shows that the community has lost faith in the justice system and opt to take the law into their own hands. “People are convinced that they are solving crime by what they are doing, but you can’t fix crime by committing another crime. Again, we’ll also look at the areas where these mob justice incidents are happening, usually these are informal settlements without any basic services. The roads are not even accessible to them, we urge them to have faith in the criminal justice system. If somebody commits a crime, they should hand them over to the police or the CPF. There is no justice in a mob killing someone, it’s vigilantism and we condemn them in the strongest form,” Makwela added.

WESTBURY UPDATE

 Mawela said they’ve established a three-layered structure in gang affected areas.

“We have established an anti-gang unit and also some members from the TRT and the POP to stabilise the area. We have also put some additional resources to put a squeeze on crime in that area. We are happy with the results so far. There's only been one incident since we made the major deployment but in other areas such as Noordgesig it’s still quiet. However, remember that this stabilisation phase is not a permanent measure, we need other government areas to come to the party and assist us to pull our weight.”

 He said the government needs to admit that there are other underlying factors that lead to the joining of gangs and drug use. “Those things are outside of the police's hands, " the premier said. He will mobilise other gov departments to go into that space so they can establish the root causes of this gangsterism. We’ve had raids where we have discovered illegal firearms and most of them are replica firearms which sound like real guns. We have recovered a lot of those and arrested people in possession of drugs, but we want a sustainable intervention which will make sure that there will be complete harmony in that space.”