100 MURDERED LAST YEAR – COPS

MBABANE – The Royal Swaziland Police do not agree with a report identifying Swaziland as having the highest murder rate in Africa.
The Global Study on Homicide, 2013 report states that the homicide rate in the kingdom stands at 33.8 per 100 000 people.

The rate of 33.8 percent as recorded by the study meant that 416 people were killed annually.
The report was released over a week ago by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The figure ranked Swaziland as the seventh among countries with the highest number of homicides.

Homicide is the crime of killing a person. Swaziland’s murder rate was also the highest in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), based on the report.
Assistant Superintendent Khulani Mamba, the police Deputy Public Relations Officer (PRO), said only 100 people were killed in 2013.
Mamba also disputed the figure given in the report. This also means at least one person is killed every day.
The figure was based on the population of just over 1.2 million people. Considering 100 murders as recorded by RSP, this meant that Swaziland had a homicide rate of 8.0 per 100 000. This figure is far much lower compared to that given by the UNODC report. Mamba wondered where the UN (United Nations) agency obtained the information.

“We were not consulted about the statistics. How did they come up with that figure?” said Mamba.
The report also states that the information on Swaziland was obtained in collaboration with the Public Health systems.
Dr Simon Zwane, Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health, said the police would be more appropriate to comment on the homicide statistics.
Mamba said the figures in the police records showed a different figure compared to what the police had on record.

The PRO said while the police did not dispute that a lot of people were murdered in the country, the figures given by UNODC were very high. He said murder referred to incidents where a person was killed by someone who had the intention to do so. Mamba said this figure should not include the number of people killed due to accidents involving motor vehicles.
He said the high figure recorded by UNODC could have included people killed in road accidents.
“We should differentiate between homicide as well as culpable homicide,” said Mamba.

The Deputy PRO Mamba said killings committed by police officers were classified under culpable homicide. He said this was because the intention was not to kill.
The Global Study on Homicide report of 2013 also did not consider deaths as result of war, culpable homicide. It considered deaths as a resulted of intention to kill.

The study is a comprehensive overview of intentional homicides across the world. “Homicide is one of the most comparable and accurate indicators for measuring violence,” the report states. It also states that the study is to improve understanding of criminal violence by providing a wealth of information about where homicide occurs.
The study further reveals the intensity and about who is most at risk or why they are at risk.

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