Thieves have stolen two television sets from a home of South Africa’s police chief General Khehla Sitole, a police spokesman has said.
“Actually, it was not a break-in. However, two television sets were stolen,” Brigadier Vish Naudi was quoted by South Africa’s privately owned IOL news site as saying.
“The national commissioner’s house is currently under construction and therefore we are exploring certain possibilities. We believe that this was purely opportunistic.”
Gen Sitole was apparently in the parliamentary capital, Cape Town, when the thieves struck at his home in eastern Mpumalanga province, IOL reported.
The police boss has become a victim of crime at a time when he is under intense pressure to bring down high crime levels in South Africa.
Sexual offences and murder rates have risen significantly in South Africa over the past year, according to new official crime figures.
Murders recorded by the police have been rising every year for the last decade, and sexual offences including rape have risen 4.6 per cent this year.
The release of the figures comes amid growing concern about violence against women, after a number of high-profile rape cases and murders in recent weeks.
Thousands of people took to the streets earlier this month to protest against the attacks.
Among sexual offences, sexual assault increased by 9.6 per cent and rape by 3.9 per cent.
For crimes detected by the police as a result of their own activities (rather than reported by the public), there was a 19 per cent increase in recorded sexual offences.
There were also increases in arson (5.5%), attempted murder (4.1%) and common assault (3.7%).
And there was an increase of more than 14 per cent in commercial crime, the majority of which related to fraud.
However, recorded robberies and thefts from property or vehicles have shown decreases over the past year.
Murder rates in South Africa have been steadily rising since 2011-12 according to official figures.
In that year, there were 15,554 recorded murders. By 2018-19, this figure had increased to 21,022.
That averages out to about 58 murders a day.
Last year, there were a total of 52,420 recorded sexual offences.
This is lower than for the period 2009-15, but over the past three years, the rate has been increasing. -BBC
