Cybercrime investigation is a relatively new addition to law enforcement responsibility, but this does not imply tardiness on the part of specialist police and detectives who have investigated thousands of cases since 2022.
Successful prosecutions are nowhere near the number of investigations, Democratic Alliance (DA) National Assembly (NA) Member of Parliament (MP) Damien Klopper found by way of November questions asked of Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and his Cabinet colleague responsible for the Justice and Constitutional Development portfolio (at that time Thembi Simelane).
Mchunu told Klopper 2 679 cybercrime cases were reported and opened in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial terms. 2 652 cases were investigated in this time, but only 33 referrals were made to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in 2022/23 and a total of 50 cybercrime cases were referred to the NPA in the 2023/24 financial year.
Four days after Simelane’s reply to Klopper was made public by the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) she was moved to the Human Settlements portfolio in a mini-Cabinet reshuffle. President Cyril Ramaphosa shifted Mmamoloko Kubayi from Human Settlements to Justice and Constitutional Development on 3 December. Klopper’s question, as per the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) was responded to on 29 November when Simelane was still responsible for the Justice and Constitutional Development portfolio.
Klopper’s follow-up question to Justice and Constitutional Development brought to light the NPA “only recorded the numbers of convictions manually and did not keep record of the specific crimes in each of these cases, for both the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. The details of these cases are thus not readily available”.
There was, however, some information for the Mpumalanga public representative thanks to the NPA’s electronic case management system (ECMS).
What it did provide was offences recorded for the two financial terms. They are possession of child pornography (five); cyber uttering (two); “disclosure of message of intimate nature” (four); obstructing a search warrant authorised police officer/investigator (two); giving false information under oath (one); inciting damage to property or violence with a data message (one); an unlawful acquisition, possession, provision, receipt or use of password, access code or similar data or device, (one).
The NPA had, at the time of answering, 37 cases involving cybercrime on court rolls nationally in respect of 88 charges under the Cyber Crimes Act of 2020.
Unlawful acquisition, possession, provision, receipt or use of password, access code or similar data or device tops the list with 36 charges, followed by cyber fraud (24).
