How this page is made

Two sources

• The answer and the trend come from the official SAPS quarterly crime statistics for Stellenbosch and Cloetesville police stations (added together), the police station for the suburbs this report covers. These figures add the Stellenbosch and Cloetesville stations together. Their area takes in the town, the university, Kayamandi, Cloetesville, Idas Valley and the farms around them, and does not follow suburb lines exactly.
• The news section lists reports that made the news, each linked to the outlet that published it. We write our own plain line for each (type, place and month) and never repeat the outlet's headline.
• We have no street-level reports for this area, so the page cannot say which streets or times are riskiest.

One period

Every figure on the page covers the same 12 months to 30 June 2026, and compares it with the 12 months before. The period ends on the last day of the latest quarter of police figures. Reports after that date are listed separately under “Since”. The one exception is “Over time”, which shows a longer run of quarters; this page's 12 months are shaded there.

July 2025 to June 2026, compared with the 12 months before.

The rules we follow

• Every sentence is worked out from the data each time the page is built. None is written by hand.
• Police figures and news use the same crime types, with the same names, order and colours: murder, sexual offences, robbery, assault, break-ins, car crime and theft.
• In the police figures, “break-ins” are break-ins at homes only, and “assault” does not include attempted murder.
• Drug offences are never added to a total or called rising: police record them when they act, so the count measures police operations.
• When numbers are small, under 20, we give the counts and no percentage. On small numbers, a change of fewer than 3 is not called a rise or a fall.
• We only say “mostly” when it means more than half.
• News reports are counted for the hotspots but are never a measure of how much crime there is.

What we can't see

• News reports cover only what journalists wrote about.
• Police figures are published months after the event and do not say where in the station area a crime happened.

Privacy

• We never write house numbers or anyone's age.
• News items are shown by type, place and month only.

Corrections

If something on this page is wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source and correct it.