Arguments, misunderstanding and road rage are some factors contributing to the increase in murders in Gauteng.

This is according to the provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Elias Mawela during a briefing on Gauteng's fourth quarterly crime statistics on Tuesday.

Mawela said the Gauteng province had recorded a 45.2% increase in murders between January and March this year.

A period he described as "a season of discontent".

He said 1 403 people were killed during the period, which was 437 more people murdered compared to the same period in 2020/2021.

Mawela said the factors that contributed to this showed that people could not resolve their conflict.

"We resort to violence every time there is a conflict amongst ourselves. We have also observed these tendencies of mass killings whereby somebody comes and shoots randomly and kills a lot of people at the same time.

"We have observed it. Even in Kagiso [West of Johannesburg] - we do have the trigger-happy people [who] find people seated around the table and enjoying themselves, and they just shoot at them randomly."

He also said during the period under review; five police officers were killed in Gauteng - one killed while on duty and four while off-duty.

Mawela also spoke about when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were eased on 31 December 2021; he said this meant increased mobility of people on the streets and an opportunity for some to commit a crime.

He said when they released the previous statistics, they had anticipated that the "honeymoon period" was over.

Mawela added that further opportunity for the crime was created by extended trading and operating hours for on-consumption liquor outlets.

He said during this period; there was also an escalated rate of protests actions about "all most everything".

"For the period under review, we had a total of 556 protests that were attended to, of which 425 were peaceful while 131 incidents were unrest related," he said.

He said cable theft added more challenges to the police's already overstretched resources.

Meanwhile, assault grievous bodily harm, common assault, and robbery contributed has contributed to about 33% of the overall crime in Gauteng.

"If we can stop beating each other up, automatically, the levels of crime in Gauteng will drop," he added.  

He also said: "The social ills within our communities are the main root cause for assault incidents [and] should the communities adopt a better acceptable means of conflict management and reduce substance abuse surely some crimes such as domestic violence, gender-based violence, murder and attempted murder will be reduced."

The commissioner also said the hijacking of trucks and passenger vehicles was also on the rise.

He said vehicles were hijacked for reasons which included the selling of spare parts and rebuilding other vehicles, while luxury cars were taken for further use in the commission of other crimes such as cash-in-transit robberies and house and business robberies. "Trucks and delivery vans are hijacked solely to steal cargo."

He said kidnappings were also on the rise and mostly happened during hijackings. At other times, he added that hijacking could lead to rape and murder.