South Africa remains a murderous country according to the latest quarterly crimes statistics.
But sexual offences have shown a decrease, according to the police, while murder increased by 8.9%.
Police Minister Bheki Cele and senior police management on Friday morning briefed Parliament’s police oversight committee about the latest stats.
The latest quarterly crime statistics cover the three months from October to 31 December last year.
Major-General Thulare Sekhukhune said that while some trends showed a slight decrease, murder continued to increase.
“In this particular period, we had an increase in murder of 562. That is 562 more people than the previous quarter,” the major-general said.
Sekhukhune said that a notable trend was the decrease in contact crimes.
“We had decreases in contact crime across all the three months. That is October, November and December. And again we had all provinces except for Limpopo recording decreases,” he said.
The latest statistics also show how only the Free State and Western Cape recorded a decrease in murder.