Well, this is bad news.

The the annual crime statistics were released in Pretoria today, and revealed that the murder rate is up 0.6% this year after an annual decline since 2007. And there are loads more people trying to kill other people, but not succeeding. Attempted murder has also increased 6,5% over the past year.

This, from City Press:

Gareth Newham, an analyst with the Institute for Security Studies, said the increases in murder, attempted murder, car hijacking, street robbery and house robbery showed that “government’s approach to crime is not working”.

“After a long period of decreases in serious and violent crime, these are the worst figures we have seen in ten years,” said Newham.

He said that there were 650 additional murders in these crime statistics, which translated to an additional two murders every day.

Police Minister, Nathi Mthethwa said the police:

will work doubly as hard to ensure the slight increase is re-routed to the downward trends that we experienced over the past nine years. Whatever the difficulties and hurdles we (the police) may have experienced over the past year, SAPS shall succeed in its endeavours. However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, success is guaranteed.

Meanwhile over at Africa Check, Nechama Brodie has some excellent, in-depth analysis of the stats.

[Source : City Press]