Chairperson, I don't know how we are going to handle my responses, I need your guidance. There are several hon members that have made observations and I need to respond to all of those. I don't know how you are going to handle it but you will stop me when you feel that I am ... [Interjections.]
Let's proceed, hon Minister, and I will give you guidance.
Thank you very much. There are many people, apart from the Minister of Safety and Security, who believe that the law-enforcement agencies in this country are going to be able to deal with the crime that is happening in South Africa.
Of course, we do accept that many South Africans are worried about the levels of crime in South Africa. I believe that these law-enforcement agencies, working in the way that they are at this time, are not alone, but are working together with the masses of our people. Such people who know what the situation was in the past, have come forward to say that they want to be part and parcel of crime-fighting in South Africa. That gives me hope that things are going to change in the future.
There are many people who have come forward and given information about criminals who have committed very serious crimes in South Africa. Between 15 July and 15 September, that is two months, the police, as a consequence of that information, arrested 384 people connected to 687 cases. All of those cases relate to serious and violent crimes - the crimes that the hon Mulder has referred to, such as car hijackings, murder, robbing of banks and cash-in-transit heists. But I hope that we are going to understand what we are dealing with when I give you the next figures.
Of those 384 people that we arrested, 85 have been linked to 400 cases. What that means theoretically is that by arresting those people we have dealt a blow against repeat offending, particularly as it relates to serious and violent crimes. However, the story does not end there. From 15 July to 3 October, when you add all of those numbers, we arrested 529 of these criminals connected to more than 800 cases.
I am not talking about the charges that each one of these people is going to face. I am just talking about the cases and in some of those cases you find a number of people who are involved in just one case. As I have just indicated, those 85 people are linked to 400 cases.
We accept that there are concerns about crime, but it is not correct to say that the crime levels in South Africa are rising because they are going down. What has not happened is that, whereas we had said all contact crime needed to come down by 7% to 10%, there are at least three types of crime that, although decreasing, have not decreased to that level, that is murder, rape and indecent assault. That is also going down but not like the others, which have actually gone down by 16% and so on.
The other thing that makes me believe that the future is going to be better is the fact that, apart from all these people who are coming forward, including businesspeople who are prepared to walk this road with us, the police themselves are getting better training and those human resources are being better deployed.
We have also adopted high technology to deal with some of the problems that we have. For instance, if you take the matter of DNA and look at some of these people who have been arrested, they were connected to those cases via DNA samples and some of the clues we have picked up from the crime scenes. Even at that level of technology, South Africa is advancing.
I also believe that the future will be better because the entire criminal justice system is itself undergoing changes, as part of the review of the system. I believe that at times we say things because we have experienced crime directly as individuals and because our families have been direct victims of crime. Therefore, there are many people who would say, despite the evidence, that crime is not going down. But crime is indeed going down in South Africa.
You have 30 seconds left, hon Minister.
Well, let me pick up on your comments, hon Kohler-Barnard. I agree with you entirely. I have said repeatedly in this House that any police officer who acts like a criminal is indeed one and we will deal with such people. [Applause.]
I agree with you that those who act in the manner you described have no part in the SA Police Service. In fact, the Independent Complaints Directorate is investigating these matters and we will deal with these officers when their guilt has been proven. Thank you very much. [Applause.]