Nyanga has for the fifth consecutive year retained the dubious title of murder capital of the country.
|||Cape Town - Western Cape residents are now, more than ever, at risk of being targeted at home as brazen criminals are increasingly forcing their way into houses.
And they’re also not safe in their cars.
Compared to all other provinces the Western Cape has shown the sharpest percentage increases in home robberies and carjackings - which are also at the highest recorded level in a decade.
In addition, Nyanga has for the fifth consecutive year retained the dubious title of murder capital of the country, based on the number of killings recorded there over a year.
The latest official police crime statistics, released on Friday and which cover the period from April 1 last year to March 31 this year, paint a worrying picture for the Western Cape.
For the country as a whole, contact crimes, including murder, rape and assault, have also increased for a third consecutive year.
Murders increased by 4.9 percent.
The latest statistics for the Western Cape show that:
* 1 530 carjackings were recorded from April 2014 to March 2015. In the same period ending on March 31 this year, this figure jumped by 502 incidents to 2 032, a 32.8 percent increase.
* Home robberies increased from 2 158 incidents in the previous year to 2 574 in the year ending on March 31. This is a 19.3 percent increase.
* 3 224 murders were reported in the year ending on March 31, a 1.2 percent increase from the previous year.
Although the Western Cape recorded the lowest murder increase in the country, the province was still the fourth highest contributor to killings in South Africa.
While 279 killings were recorded in Nyanga, 21 fewer murders than compared to the previous year, it was the still the highest number of killings reported in any of the country’s police precincts.
A presentation used during the official release of the latest crime statistics, shown in Parliament on Friday, listed the country’s 10 murder hot spots.
Seven of the 10 were in the Western Cape - Nyanga, Gugulethu, Harare, Khayelitsha, Delft, Kraaifontein and Mfuleni.
On Friday Nyanga community police forum chairman Martin Makasi said he was not surprised: “We were expecting it.”
The biggest factor driving crime in Nyanga, Makasi said, was illegal liquor outlets.
“Last week when we went on a joint operation with police, the outlets were all overcrowded and the people were very, very young;
“There are about 400 illegal liquor outlets.”
To tackle the high crime levels, residents were increasingly working with police,” he added.
“Despite the challenges, we are working together. There have also been 41 additional police members working here,” he said.
“And from time to time we get people from other police clusters coming in.”
Chumile Sali, safety and justice spokesman for the Social Justice Coalition, an NGO in Khayelitsha, said all murder hotspots in Cape Town were in informal settlements.
“There is a shortage of police in these communities,” he said.
“But in as much as the increasing murder rate is a failure of the police to do its work, it is also a failure of other levels of government.”
Most murders occurred in the city’s poor areas, which all lacked tarred roads, streetlights, working CCTV cameras and inside toilets.
“We just cannot distance people’s social and economic condition from the high murder rate.”
In Camps Bay, the number of murders recorded over the year was seven, compared to zero the previous year.
Only seven carjackings were also reported there within a year.
Bernard Schafer, the Camps Bay community police forum’s chairman, attributed the suburb’s “consistently low” crime figures to the savvy use of intelligence information, as well as good relationships with, among others, the police.
“Like with many other police stations, we suffer from the same lack of resources and manpower issues,” he said. “We lack personnel for certain functions, our old station is cramped, leaks and is slowly falling apart.
“Our police operate out of temporary structures and hot metal containers, but we have learnt to make the most of what we’ve got.”
While house robberies showed a sharp percentage increase in the Western Cape, house burglaries, different to home robberies in that criminals broke in and burgled generally while no one was home, showed a slight decrease of - 0.4 percent.
However, the number of incidents, 47 569, still remained high.
So-called crowbar gangs, burglars who quickly smash their way into homes and steal items within minutes, have been problematic in the province.
In Durbanville, one of the worst affected areas, the number of home robberies reported in the year ending on March 31, compared to the previous 12 months, increased by 10 percent to 33 incidents.
But home break-ins decreased by 204 incidents in the year ending on March 31.
On Friday Lesley Ashton, chairwoman of the Tygerberg community police forum cluster, which includes Durbanville, Brackenfell and Kraaifontein areas, said communication among residents had increased.
“Our eyes and ears, WhatsApp groups and communications have improved within our communities,” she said.
The Tygerberg community police forum cluster was focused on empowering members so they could effectively become “force multipliers” to police.
Weekend Argus