Your home is most likely to be broken into in June, September and December: Risenga Maluleke

There is an increase in housebreakings throughout South Africa and June, September and December seem to be the high-risk periods, according to the latest data released by Stats SA on Tuesday.

The data — which looked at crime trends in the past 12 months — shows housebreaking is the most common crime and peaked in June with 162,000 cases reported, while in September, 132,000 cases were reported and 120,000 in December.

Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke, presenting the Victims of Crime Survey on Tuesday, noted this was the time when schools were closed. “It seems it gets darker quicker, but also, if you look at June, September and December, that is the time when the schools are closed and most [homeoners] tend to be away from home.,” he said.

“There are those who go on holiday and those who do not go on holiday, you find some of them send children to the grandparents in rural provinces while they are at work.”

According to Stats SA, in 2023/2024 an estimated 1.5-million incidences of housebreaking occurred, affecting 1.1-million households. Affected households represent 5.9% of all SA households.  

About 44.1% of households that experienced housebreaking reported some or all incidences to the police.

It was estimated that 263,000 incidences of home robberies occurred, affecting 209,000 households in 2023/2024, with the number of affected households representing 1.1% of all households.

About 58% of households that experienced home robbery reported some or all incidences to the police. 

The Victims of Crime 2023/2024 report is a sample size of 30,000 households spread across the nine provinces. Maluleke said as of 2017, they redesigned the survey to make room for new information. “We are not competing with the SAPS crime statistics. We are complimenting each other,” he said. 

The household experience of crimes includes housebreaking, home robbery, theft of motor vehicle, assault, murder, sexual offence and deliberate damaging of dwellings. 

Maluleke said when they looked at the comparison, households that experienced housebreaking increased by 5% in 2023/2024. “That is when we look at the past 12 months and we can see when we look at other crimes we see an increase in all of them. 

“About 100% of households that experience murder reported all incidents to the police and less than 50% of housebreaking incidents were reported to the police.  Let us look at murder at the top; while incidents were 22,000, they were all reported to the police because murder turns [out] to be shocking not only to the households but to the neighbourhood and society and people will always report to the police,” he said. 

“Whereas if we look at housebreaking or burglary we had almost 1.5-million incidents but less than 50% of those were reported, that is 44.1% were reported to the police.”

Maluleke added people tend to report theft of motor vehicles and that was largely because most vehicles are insured but also those that are not insured, the owner always has hope that when reporting police would be able to recover the vehicle. 

The number of people who felt safe walking alone in their neighbourhoods during the day decreased from 80.8% in 2022/2023 to 80.4% in 2023/2024. Those who felt safe walking alone at night decreased from 37.0% in 2022/2023 to 34.9% in 2023/2024. 

Stats SA also revealed  39.9% of people aged 16 years and older have done something to protect themselves against crime in 2023/2024, while 43.8% of people indicated the first thing they will do if they see a person committing crime is to call the police.

An estimated 1.4m-million incidences of theft of personal property occurred in 2023/2024, affecting 1.3m-million individuals aged 16 years and older. The number of affected individuals represents 3.0% of the population. 

TimesLIVE