PARLIAMENT, September (ANA) - Police Minister Bheki Cele on Tuesday said he was putting the heads of the SA Police Service (Saps) management team on the block following dismal crime statistics showing another upward trend in the murder rate in South Africa.
"The minister of police and SA Police Service should put their heads on the block in that this situation must be arrested with the swiftness it deserves and it must be reversed with lightning speed," Cele said after he and Saps management presented the crime statistics to Parliament.
"The worst thing we can do, which cannot be done in my tenure in this office, is to come and give the same crime stats next year or worse to what we've currently done."
The stats revealed the total number of murders recorded by the SA Police Service (Saps) from April 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, were 20,366 compared to 19,016 reported in the previous year.
Cele earlier told MPs this translated into an average 57 people being killed in South Africa every day.
"The SA Police Service will declare up front that somewhere, somehow we dropped the ball," Cele said.
- African News Agency (ANA)
