Johan Burger, Senior Researcher, Crime and Justice Programme, ISS Pretoria Office

As it does every year, the release of the annual official crime statistics by Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa attracted substantial attention. It has become a ritual of sorts: the media and various research, business and civil society organisations gather in Pretoria to hear about the latest trends for various types of crime.

The news this year are generally very positive prompting the Minister of Police to state that “indeed the tide is turning against crime is turning.” For example, the murder rate has declined quite consistently since 1994 and now at 31 per 100 000 it is less than half of that recorded at the birth of democracy. When it comes to business, there is a wealth of information in addition to the crime statistics that highlight whether crime affecting business is improving or not.

Last year, crime and corruption remained the region’s biggest "impediment" to business, according to the 2009-10 German Business Perspective on the Southern African Development Community. At the time a third of German businesses in SA indicated they had been affected by both crime and corruption. Crimes include theft, vandalism, robbery, hostage-taking and murder. However, a significant shift appears to have happened this year among business owners in SA.  This is that while perceptions of SA’s political climate are worsening, the opposite is happening in relation to crime.

According to the Grant Thornton International Business Report (July 2011), 46% of the respondents this year cited the political climate as reason for considering emigration compared with 42% last year. However, when survey participants were asked whether they, their employees or any of their immediate families were victims of a specified number of "contact" crimes (categorised as road rage, hijackings, personal security threats, violent crimes and housebreakings) in the past year, there was a decrease of 5% compared with last year. This reflects a trend that has seen a decline of 34% since 2007. While this is great news, the fact that 50% of the participants still indicated they had experienced at least one of these crimes in the past year demonstrates that crime still remains a problem.

A number of indicators point to further overall crime decreases in SA and the official 2010-11 crime statistics have provided further clarity. To make sense of them, it helps to break them down in terms of violent crime, property-related crime and commercial or white-collar crime.

In addition to the official crime statistics it is also necessary to assess the data collected by business associations so as to corroborate official trends. Reports by the Consumer Goods Council of SA and the South African Banking Risk and Information Centre (Sabric) provide useful statistics from which to compare police figures. It should be noted, however, that while the statistics generated by business associations reflect only crimes reported by their members, the police statistics are generated from all sources. Therefore, the statistics generated by the police in the category "business robbery" include every robbery reported to them, from shopping malls all the way through to the very smallest business.

Violent crimes that mostly affect business include business robberies, bank robberies, cash-in-transit robberies, truck hijackings and automatic teller machine (ATM) attacks (or bombings). According to the official police crime reports for the seven financial years between 2003-04 and 2009-10, the trends for these violent crimes were showing signs of decline, or at least the rate of increase was slowing down substantially. The notable exception appears to be attacks on ATMs which increased by 61.5%.

• While Business robberies increased 295% to 14 534 cases between 2003-04 and 2009- 10 (an average of 42% a year), the increase in the latest statistics is a marginal 0.9%
  
  
• Bank robberies decreased for a second consecutive year in 2009- 10 — by 8,8% — after increasing by 166% between 2003-04 and 2007-08. Compared with the 561 bank robberies recorded in 1996-97, the 2011 figure of 39 demonstrates a remarkable decline in this crime type. 
  
  
• Cash-in-transit robberies decreased by 23% over the three-year period between 2006-07 and 2009-10. A substantial decrease of 18.7% was recorded in 2010/2011 revealing that 291 incidents occurred last year compared to the high of 467 in 2006/07.
  
  
• Truck hijackings: There has been a notable 56% increase in truck hijackings between 2003-04 and 2009-10, when 1412 cases were recorded. However, truck hijacking recorded a substantial decrease of 29.2% to 999 instances in the latest crime figures.
  
  
• ATM attacks tend to fluctuate quite dramatically: according to Sabric figures, ATM attacks (or bombings) increased from a relatively low 30 incidents in 2004 to 447 cases in 2008. In 2009/10 a total of 247 instances were recorded, this however increased by 61.5% when 399 cases were reported.

Property-related crimes in relation to business include burglary (non-residential) and shoplifting:

• Burglaries at business premises decreased 13% between 2004-05 and 2009-10, when 56 048 incidents were recorded. However, in 2010/2011 a decrease of 4.8% was recorded.
  
  
• Shoplifting initially decreased 9%, from 71 888 in 2003/04 to 65 489 in 2006/07, then gradually increased to the 88 634 cases recorded in 2009-10 (an average annual increase of 8%). However, in the latest figures, shoplifting had decreased by 11.8%.
  
  
• Commercial crime, as a police category, includes all kinds of fraud, forgery and uttering, misappropriations and embezzlement. In 2004-05, this category decreased slightly from 55 869 cases to 53 931 (3,5%), but then followed a steep upward trend, to 84 842 cases in 2009-10 (an average annual increase of 11%). The latest figures show that the rate of increase in numbers of cases has slowed to 2.8%.  The good news however, is that according to the 2010 Sabric annual report, financial losses incurred from commercial crimes such as card and cheque fraud decreased by 36% and 32% respectively last year.

The Consumer Goods Council figures show that big business experienced decreases in armed robberies (43%) and business burglaries (27%) among its members in 2010/2011, with concomitant reductions in financial losses of 48% and 49% respectively.

The latest crime indicators from the private sector, for the comparative periods April-July 2010 to April-July 2011 point to further positive trends in violent and property-related crimes. Robberies in the banking industry have decreased by 42%; the cash-in-transit industry by 20%; the retail industry by 46%; the petroleum industry by 39%; and the casino industry by 62%. The retail (72%) and petroleum industries (56%) have also shown significant decreases in burglaries.

The central message from this analysis is that, although the overall crime threat against business in SA is still high, and some crimes such as business robberies and ATM attacks continue to increase, most indicators point to a gradual improvement and even visible reductions in most crime types that affect business.

However, the key trend is that criminals are starting to shift their focus from larger retail outlets to smaller businesses which are seen as softer targets. While the news is good for big business it is not good for smaller businesses and this is an area that must be prioritised by government as a matter of urgency.