In a landmark release that provides a broader picture of South Africa’s crime landscape, Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke unveiled the 2024/25 Victims of Crime Survey on Thursday. The report, derived from the Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey (GPSJS), moves beyond traditional police data by capturing crimes that go unreported, offering a sobering look at the experiences of ordinary households.
Unlike official police statistics, which only record crimes reported to authorities, the GPSJS includes unreported incidents for crimes such as housebreaking, home robbery, assault, and theft of personal property. This approach is designed to measure the “dark figure” of crime that often escapes official channels.
The findings present a complex and contrasting picture of the nation’s safety. The most alarming figure is a 55.3% increase in sexual offences experienced by households over the past year. Maluleke provided stark numbers, revealing that approximately 73,000 households experienced a sexual offence in the past five years, a significant jump from the 47,000 reported in the previous survey cycle.
“This shows that there has been an increase by 55.3% from the previous year,” Maluleke stated during the presentation in Pretoria.
In a positive development, the survey indicated that murder decreased by 11.9%. However, the context remains grave. Maluleke detailed a five-year trend where murder rates peaked at 67,000 households in the previous year before falling to the current figure of 59,000 households.
“The report shows a decrease by 11.9% straight to 59,000,” he said, noting a dip during the COVID-19 period before a subsequent rise and this recent decline.
The report identified housebreaking as the most prevalent crime experienced by South African households over the past five years, occurring at a rate that “dwarfs” all other categories, including home robbery and assault. Despite its prevalence, housebreaking saw a modest decrease of 1%.
To visually represent the data, statisticians had to significantly amplify the scales for other crimes to make them visible next to the overwhelming frequency of housebreaking incidents. Among these other crimes, home robbery and sexual offences were noted as the only categories to have increased, even though their absolute numbers remain far lower than housebreaking.
Conversely, assault, theft of motor vehicles, and deliberate damage to property all continued a downward trend.
The Victims of Crime Report is set to become a critical tool for policymakers, providing a more nuanced understanding of crime trends that affect South Africans directly in their homes, complementing the operational data released by the South African Police Service.