Minister of Police Professor Firoz Cachalia says the reduction in violent crime is encouraging, but the crime rate remains too high. (Photo: Brenton Geach /Gallo Images) While acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia is cautiously optimistic about the decrease in violent crimes across South Africa, he believes gang violence in the Western and Eastern Cape needs urgent attention as it remains “worrisomely high.”
Unpacking the national crime statistics for the third quarter of the 2025/26 police financial year on Friday, Cachalia welcomed the widespread downward trend in most categories, but said crime levels remain unacceptably high.
The situation in the Cape Flats and Nelson Mandela Bay’s crime-ridden regions also warranted a mention during proceedings at Saturday’s Armed Forces Day, where President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated his commitment to deploy the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to combat gang violence.
Nationally, year-on-year murder figures for October to December 2025 decreased by 8.7%, while sexual offences dropped by 2.8%. On the other hand, attempted murders and commercial crimes were up by 2.5% and 2%, respectively.
“Despite these welcome national trends, the levels of crime remain unacceptably high. The crime situation also varies substantially across the country.
“While most communities have recorded a decrease in violent and property crimes, there are still too many communities that have recorded increases. This does not necessarily translate into a felt sense of security by individuals, families and communities,” said Cachalia.
National police commissioner General Fannie Masemola echoed Cachalia that numbers remained high, but reductions in crucial areas were encouraging.
“This is indeed a clear demonstration that we are turning the tide, intentionally and aggressively by heightening police visibility and successfully implementing solution-driven crime-combating strategies, with a view of ultimately dismantling organised crime syndicates,” he said.
/file/attachments/2984/ED_585774_955615_3d73eff74f677e0f7087bf4b19095ab1.jpg "National police commissioner General Fannie Masemola believes a drop in violent crime is indicative of the efforts of police officials across the country. (Photo: Gallo Images/Luba Lesolle)")
Masemola said targeted intelligence-driven operations had led to a 14% reduction in trio crimes (carjacking, house robberies and business robberies), and while the police still have a long way to go in their ongoing battle against crime, he believes these small victories serve as motivation for their members to intensify their efforts.
/file/attachments/2988/CrimeStatsgraphic_136604.jpg "The third quarter 2025/26 crime statistics reflected an 8.7% drop in murders. (Research: Riaan Marais; Graphic: NotebookLM)")
With the pending deployment of military forces in problem areas, all eyes will be on criminal activity in the precincts Ramaphosa highlighted during his address on Saturday.
“This deployment is a shield for the vulnerable, so that a child in Nyanga, Eldorado Park or New Brighton can walk to school without the shadow of a bullet haunting their steps,” said the President.
The Western Cape — specifically the City of Cape Town — dominated the list of the top 30 police precincts for murder during this period. The city claimed 10 spots, with Mfuleni (75 cases) and Nyanga (70 cases) ranking as the first and second most violent precincts in the country.
The Eastern Cape and Gauteng each took eight of the top 30 spots, with New Brighton in the Eastern Cape, as mentioned by Ramaphosa, taking sixth place with 51 cases.
Gender-based violence
“We are taking steps to strengthen the policing approach to addressing gender-based violence and femicide, and other forms of violence. For example, the SAPS has allocated an additional 999 police members to the detective services over the past year,” said Cachalia.
“While we work to improve law enforcement, we also need to give attention to implementing the Integrated Crime and Violence Prevention Strategy (ICVPS.) This requires that different social departments, such as health, education and social development, align their services across levels of government to mitigate the factors that drive crime and violence so that it can be prevented from happening.”
Cachalia said he would host a meeting with all the provincial heads of Community Safety so they can align operations with the national, provincial and local government ICVPS in precincts identified as high-crime areas.
He also made special mention of organised crime, which is not recorded in the stats, either because fraud and corruption are not covered by the statistics, or because small businesses fail to report incidents of extortion to the police.
“Nevertheless, the impact of these crimes is real and severely damaging for our country,” said Cachalia.
“When public funds are stolen at a large scale, we feel it in various ways. Local-level organised corruption in tendering and the copper cable theft syndicates contribute to water and electricity outages that cause havoc to our lives.
“As the Madlanga Commission and parliamentary ad hoc inquiries have shown, organised criminality has infiltrated our criminal justice system. We have already established a dedicated task team to investigate evidence of criminality against senior SAPS and Ekurhuleni local government officials that have been identified by the interim report of the Madlanga Commission as being part of criminal activities.”
He said better vetting and lifestyle audits would be crucial in weeding out corrupt individuals in the top ranks of the police, government and the justice system. Additional resources would be used to identify criminal individuals and networks and dismantle their operations and resources. DM