Police Minister Fikile Mbalula has urged communities to get involved in the fight against crime.
The minister was speaking during the release of the 2016/17 crime statistics.
He said there was a need to involve society in campaigns against substance and alcohol abuse which are among the factors behind crime. The minister urged the men and women in blue to increase policing saying more could be done to arrest crime.
“The public must be proactively involved in efforts to fight crime. Crime should be addressed by all of us as an issue of national interest and priority. We must not score political points over this issue…”
He said curbing crime is in the country’s national interest. Crime affects everyone, said the minister, citing the example of the Deputy Minister of Police, Bongani Mkongi, who could not attend the release of the crime statistics because his nephew had been stabbed to death in Khayelitsha.
Of the 2.1 million serious crimes recorded, 1.7 million were community-reported crimes, which is a drop of 1.8 percent compared to the previous financial year.
“This decrease was driven mainly by a reduction in all the broad crime categories, namely contact-related crime (-3.3 percent), contact crime (-2.4 percent), other serious crimes (-2.0 percent) and property-related crime (-0.5 percent).”
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