A man walks into a police station to make a statement. The staff are helpful. So far, so good.
However, upon exiting the building, he is bewildered. While the ink was drying on his statement about damage to a rental car, thieves stole all four hubcaps off the vehicle parked outside — right under the noses of officers on duty.
It reads like the script of a comedy but was no laughing matter for retired Prof Johannes Cronjé, who last weekend parked four bays away from the entrance to Fleet Street police station in East London.
It simply boggles the mind. But it's also a window into how dire a crime problem we have when criminals have no respect for the law, be it theft outside a police station or spraying bullets at commuters at a minibus taxi rank in broad daylight.
Even more concerning is a lack of public faith in the ability of the police to uphold the law, solve cases and arrest criminals.
This was laid bare on Tuesday by Stats SA's governance, public safety and justice survey 2024/25, which highlighted an inherent “trust deficit” between police and the public when it comes to reporting crime.
The report provides complementary data to official police crime statistics based on a countrywide household survey of perceptions and experiences of crime, trust in public institutions and perceptions of safety.
It found housebreaking and burglary were the most commonly experienced household crimes followed by home robbery and assault. An estimated 1.5-million incidents of housebreaking occurred in the year under review, representing 5.7% of all households in South Africa.
Unless every resident of every suburb and rural area across the country does their bit to report crime, ensure the police act, or even join a neighbourhood watch, SAPS alone will not win this fight
Yet housebreaking was one of the least reported household crimes to the police. What is going wrong here?
Parliament's police portfolio committee chairperson Ian Cameron raised a valid point.
“It is worrying that only about 43% of households that experienced housebreaking in the 2024/25 financial year reported some or all incidents to the police, and that about 51% of households that experienced home robbery reported some or all incidents to the police. This is a worrying low number of reported incidents to the police and points to an inherent trust deficit,” he said.
Is our trust in the police so degraded that so many homeowners and tenants don't bother any more to report housebreakings? Without a police case number, as proof of a crime, insurance companies are not likely to pay out claims for stolen goods.
Stats SA said most households (25.1%) did not report housebreaking cases because “police could do nothing/lack of proof” and “police would not do anything about it”. Only 1.2% of the households indicated the reason they did not report incidents was “no insurance”.
We know SAPS is under-resourced and has a shortage of detectives to resolve cases. But homeowners are effectively shooting themselves in the foot by not reporting crimes like robbery and housebreaking. That's because the limited resources available are allocated to police stations based on their reported crime statistics.
A similar lack of public trust in police emerged in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, this week as the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service, DG Thulani Sibuyi, engaged residents under siege by extortionists, gangsters and warring taxi associations.
Police alone will not make significant inroads against crime unless they have the trust and co-operation of victims of crime and communities.
Cameron and Sibuyi acknowledged that a “whole of society approach to fight crime” was required and that if the police “relationship with communities was not strengthened, they would not be able to prevent crime”.
Prof Cronjé did the right thing by turning around and walking back into Fleet Street police station to make another statement.
“It is not every day that I have to go to a police station, but having to go back inside immediately afterwards to report a fresh crime is certainly a first for me,” he told TimesLIVE Premium.
It is easy to throw barbs at the police for the crime pandemic, claiming the lives of mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, children and the elderly. But one thing is clear: unless every resident of every suburb and rural area across the country does their bit to report crime, ensure the police act, or even join a neighbourhood watch, SAPS alone will not win this fight.
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