By Thapelo Molefe
South Africa recorded sharp declines in trio crimes and violent offences in the fourth quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, although police warned that organised crime, extortion and gang violence remain deeply entrenched in several provinces.
Presenting the latest crime statistics in Pretoria on Friday, acting police minister Firoz Cachalia said house robberies fell by 20.4%, business robberies by 18.3%, and robberies at non-residential premises by 22% compared with the same period last year.
Nationally, violent contact crimes declined by 4.6%, while murders dropped by 9.5% from 5,727 cases to 5,181.
Cachalia described the decline as “real and measurable progress” but cautioned that crime levels remained “unacceptably high”.
“While we must not sugar-coat the reality, neither must we ignore the gains that hard-working police officers and communities have made together,” he said.
Police attributed the reductions to intensified policing operations, intelligence-led interventions and the continued rollout of Operation Shanela.
Acting national commissioner Puleng Dimpane said Operation Shanela had resulted in more than 2.2 million arrests since its launch three years ago.
Between January and April, SAPS conducted 6,646 high-density operations nationwide, arresting more than 218,000 suspects, including over 31,000 wanted for violent crimes.
Police also confiscated 1,912 firearms, 24,502 rounds of ammunition and 12,483 dangerous weapons during the operations.
Despite the improvements, Gauteng remained the country’s main organised crime hotspot, accounting for 57.1% of all carjackings, 54.8% of kidnappings and nearly half of all cash-in-transit robberies nationally.
KwaZulu-Natal continued to face high levels of extortion and organised criminal violence, while the Western Cape remained plagued by gang-related crime.
“The Western Cape recorded reductions in priority crimes; however, it continues to battle entrenched gang violence,” Dimpane said.
The Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal recorded the highest murder rates per capita, with the Eastern Cape topping the list at 14.3 murders per 100,000 people.
Police also flagged growing concerns over extortion rackets and organised criminal syndicates targeting businesses and construction projects.
Cachalia said SAPS had sampled 469 extortion cases nationally, with the Western Cape accounting for 57 of the 131 protection-racket cases analysed.
“These networks do not only steal money. They sabotage service delivery, collapse small businesses, and rob our people of jobs and opportunities,” he said.
The minister said alcohol abuse, domestic violence, retaliation attacks and vigilantism continued to drive much of the country’s violent crime.
Nearly half of all rapes recorded during the quarter occurred either at the home of the victim or perpetrator, while 898 murders were linked to arguments and misunderstandings.
Police further linked 7,267 incidents of murder, rape, attempted murder and assault to alcohol abuse.
At the same briefing, Cachalia confirmed that SAPS would proceed with procurement and institutional reforms ahead of the release of the final Madlanga Commission report.
“I have decided not to wait until August for the final report from the Commission, because the areas that require systemic reform are already clear,” he said.
The minister announced a new police advisory panel chaired by former South African Revenue Service (SARS) commissioner Edward Kieswetter to oversee the implementation of the SAPS reset agenda.
The reforms include overhauling procurement systems, strengthening crime intelligence, modernising forensic services and improving accountability within the police service.
During the question-and-answer session, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner and national head of the organised crime task team Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said police had already begun coordinating multidisciplinary teams to tackle organised crime syndicates nationally.
“We are already hard at work in coordinating different teams that are on the ground,” Mkhwanazi said.
INSIDE POLITICS
