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Local – Housebreaking remains the most experienced household crime in South Africa, according to Stats SA’s latest Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey. The survey shows how much crime never reaches the police, filling in gaps that official statistics miss.
Theft of personal property is the most common crime individuals face, affecting an estimated 1.2 million people. Reporting rates are low across nearly every crime type, with only 48% of housebreaking reported to the police.
Stats SA acting deputy director-general for population and social statistics, Solly Molayi, said households cited police inaction as the main reason they stayed quiet, ahead of a lack of evidence and, worryingly, a growing tendency to handle crime within the community instead.
“We wanted to understand what the reasons are, and one of the main reasons that they give us is that they say police won’t do anything about it,” Molayi said.
Home Invasions Leave Lasting Trauma
Home robbery, where criminals confront people inside their own homes, dropped to around 179,000 cases but remains one of the most traumatic crimes for households, especially where children are present. Molayi said more than half of these incidents involved a weapon, most often a firearm, followed by knives.
“About 57% of those incidents, a weapon was used. A gun is the most type of weapon that is mostly being used in this type of crime, followed by a knife. And we have seen that in those households we do have the little ones,” Molayi said.
Women More Likely to Know Their Attacker
Street robberies dropped slightly, from around 529,000 to 515,000 incidents, with reporting improving to 42%. Molayi said assault victims were also asked whether they knew their attacker, and the results split sharply along gender lines, with women far more often assaulted by a spouse, friend or relative than by a stranger.
“It became clear that the large proportion of females indicated that they experienced assault from a known person, meaning they knew the person. If you break it down, that known person: it’s a spouse, leading at about 31%, followed by a friend at about 19.8%, and a relative,” Molayi said.
