{"id":91126,"date":"2026-03-27T12:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=91126"},"modified":"2026-03-27T12:29:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:29:36","slug":"outlier-150-sas-grain-production-commercial-crime-electricity-debt-dagga-decriminalisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2026\/03\/27\/outlier-150-sas-grain-production-commercial-crime-electricity-debt-dagga-decriminalisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlier #150: SA’s grain production, commercial crime, electricity debt, dagga decriminalisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\ud83d\udcb8 Current accounts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Municipalities owed Eskom R110.5-billion by December 2025 for electricity supplied. It is a 17% increase from R94.6-billion at the end of March 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This debt has risen despite Eskom and the National Treasury running a municipal debt relief programme, which requires municipalities to pay their current electricity bills before Treasury writes off historical debt. Of the 71 municipalities on the programme, only 10 were compliant with paying their current accounts, according to Eskom\u2019s March 2026 presentation to Parliament\u2019s portfolio committee on electricity and energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom has taken formal steps under the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act against 14 municipalities that have not paid for electricity used over the past 18 months. If municipalities fail to act, Eskom may interrupt or limit supply proportional to any payment received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom can also enter distribution agency agreements with municipalities, installing smart meters and collecting revenue directly from customers. The reasons arrears have grown so unmanageable, according to energy analyst Sampson Mamphweli, are that municipal infrastructure is dilapidated, distribution networks go unmaintained, customers do not pay for services, and when they do, municipalities do not pass the money on to Eskom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83c\udf3d The harvest maths<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This week we spent a few days in Paarl in SA\u2019s agricultural heartland. As part of a presentation on building data resources we produced a dashboard about some of SA\u2019s critical grain crops including maize and wheat. Looks like it\u2019s been a good year for mealies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udea8 Crime in the boardroom<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Commercial crime in the Johannesburg police district has increased by 70% over six years. Between January and December 2019, there were 11,929 reported cases of commercial crime, which includes fraud, embezzlement and cybercrime. By 2025, the number had risen to 20,103, according to South African Police Service data. This mirrors the national trend, where cases rose from 85,784 to 145,807 over the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe rise is likely due to an increase in online crime, including ransomware attacks, fraud schemes, and other digital scams,\u201d said Lizette Lancaster, head of the Justice and Violence Prevention Programme at the Institute of Security Studies. \u201cDigital banking fraud is likely one of the largest and fastest-growing components. Schemes are becoming increasingly sophisticated due to AI, which drives phishing campaigns and deepfake-enabled impersonations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Lancaster, commercial crime remains \u201cnotoriously underreported by the public as well as the private sector, because of the associated reputational risk\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udca8 The dagga divide<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Since cannabis was decriminalised, the number of drug-related convictions in South Africa\u2019s courts has plummeted, and it may be having a positive effect on serious crime convictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2018 Constitutional Court judgment decriminalised the possession of cannabis for private use. Before the judgment, more than half of convictions in the courts were related to dealing or possessing drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NPA reported 156,158 convictions in 2017\/18. This dropped to 41,404 in 2018\/19, before increasing slightly to 46,876 in 2019\/20, and dropping to 13,570 in 2020\/21 during the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a gap in the data between 2021 and 2023 because the NPA\u2019s annual reports for those years did not contain figures for total drug-related convictions. In the NPA\u2019s 2024\/25 annual report, only 5,575 drug-related convictions are reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means there has been a small increase in convictions for other serious crimes since 2019. In 2019\/20, there were 170,591 convictions not related to dealing or possessing cannabis. In 2024\/25, there were 178,009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is nowhere close to the more than 239,000 convictions in 2009\/10, which shows the NPA is still struggling to recover from capture during the Zuma years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chart produced in partnership with <\/em>GroundUp<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here for a link to all references for this newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EVENTS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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On Wednesday, 1 April, we’re sitting down with Kevin Parry, deputy director of data visualisation at Stats SA – and the timing feels right. Over the past year or so, Stats SA has quietly raised its game when it comes to visualisation and how it presents data to the public and we wanted to go behind the scenes to understand what’s driving that shift. Parry will walk us through the decisions, tools and thinking shaping how South Africa’s statistical agency communicates numbers. If you’ve ever wondered how official statistics get turned into something the public can actually use, this one’s for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live attendance<\/a> is free. Outlier members<\/strong> will get access to the recording of the webinar after the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this week we hosted an Out to Lunch<\/strong> conversation with Joubert Roux, the inspiring co-founder of Zero Carbon Charge<\/a>, which is building electric vehicle charging stations around South Africa. Outlier members can watch the recording here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1387,1380],"tags":[1438,1441,1439,50,1440,40],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-91126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-outlier","category-this-week-in-charts","tag-commercial-crime","tag-convictions","tag-dagga","tag-johannesburg","tag-npa","tag-south-africa"],"acf":{"big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":false,"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91126"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91134,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91126\/revisions\/91134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91126"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=91126"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=91126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}