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Whenever our national crime statistics are released, numbers get crunched and we’re left looking at some staggering numbers.

For example, in the first three months of this year (January to March), 6 083 people were murdered in South Africa.

That’s just shy of 2 028 people a month, or 68 people a day, or 2,83 an hour. As you may have guessed from the headline, that’s one every 21 minutes.

Those are just the reported murders and there are countless others which are never added to the statistics. More via News24:

The high number of murders between January and March this year represents a 22% increase from the same period last year when 4 976 murders were recorded…

Police say 2 268 murders occurred in public spaces… Statistics show that 1 350 recorded murder cases took place at the residence of a victim or perpetrator.

Naturally, during the announcement of the fourth-quarter (Q4) crime stats on Friday, Police Minister Bheki Cele talked about implementing various improvements that will never see the light of day.

At least we can count on him to always arrive in his gangster hat, blow hot air, and then move swiftly along. Some of his statement below:

“Honestly, no answer justified these dismal figures, but we all agreed, that all provinces, districts, clusters and stations need to do things differently if indeed we want to see desired outcomes… SAPS can no longer afford to pay lip service, but must introduce accountability at stations – if we are to truly serve and protect this nation. This is why immediate interventions have now been put in place to address the dip in performance.”

Rinse and repeat when the next quarter’s crime stats are released.

EWN put together this infographic to summarise the Q4 stats:

[sources:news24&ewn]