Western Cape carjackings fall 14,6% in Dyantyi's first crime report

Carjackings in the Western Cape fell 14,6% in the first quarter of the 2026/27 financial year, part of a broad decline in serious and violent crime reported by the province’s new police commissioner.

Lieutenant General Sizakhele Dyantyi presented the figures on 15 September, his first crime statistics briefing since taking over the South African Police Service in the province from Lieutenant General Thembisile Patekile. As CapeTown ETC reported on the same day, the release showed contact crime down 6,3%, murder down 6,7% and house robberies down 15%.

The numbers cover the first three months of the financial year, the period from April to June.

What the figures show

At the stations running Operation Prosper, the province’s hotspot-focused policing drive, the declines were sharper. Contact crime at those stations fell 12,1% and murder dropped 16,8%, roughly two and a half times the provincial murder decline.

Dyantyi credited members in the field and acknowledged the groundwork laid by his predecessor during the period under review. He said the statistics are not an end in themselves, describing them as a tool for measuring how the police are performing and for planning a response to emerging crime trends.

The commissioner also said the fight is not over. Reported rapes rose 3,8% and sexual assaults 5,7% over the same quarter, the only major categories in the release that moved in the wrong direction. He said gender-based violence remains a top priority for the police in the province and committed to strengthening the response to crimes against women and children.

Illegal firearms remain on the list. Dyantyi restated the service’s commitment to pursuing people who hold guns unlawfully.

What the numbers mean for people here

A 14,6% fall in carjackings is the kind of figure a driver in Mitchells Plain, Nyanga or Delft notices before any statistician does. It is also the category most exposed to a single bad month, because the base is smaller than murder, so a good quarter is a good quarter and not yet a trend.

Murder is the more stubborn number, and the one the province has struggled to move for years. A 6,7% provincial decline and a 16,8% decline at hotspot stations in the same three months is the clearest signal in the release about where the policing effort was concentrated and whether it worked.

Operation Prosper is the instrument behind that. It puts additional members into identified high-crime areas rather than spreading them evenly across the province, and the gap between the provincial and hotspot figures is the measure of the approach.

The rise in reported sexual offences sits against a national picture in which many such crimes are never reported at all, so an increase in the reported figure can mean more crimes or more willingness to come forward. The release does not separate the two, and the commissioner did not claim it did. What the police can act on is the response once a case is opened, and that is where the commitment to women and children will be tested.

The state’s response

The South African Police Service in the Western Cape said it remains committed to the fight against crime and to working with communities and law enforcement partners to make the province safer.

The next set of quarterly figures, covering July to September, is due later in the financial year, and it will show whether the declines hold once the first quarter’s operations are no longer new.

Source: CapeTown ETC, Western Cape crime drops, but rape and sexual assault remain a concern