Tourist numbers up thanks to Oscar, says Stats SA chief

South Africa is attracting international attention as a country of "crimes of passion" because of the Oscar Pistorius trial and the imminent Shrien Dewani murder trial.

This is according to statistician-general Pali Lehohla, who released figures yesterday from a tourism survey for December 2013.

"South Africa is in the news for the Oscar Pistorius case and the focus is on South Africa. [Then] we will have [Shrien] Dewani's case. South Africa is a centre of crimes of passion," said Lehohla.

Most of the almost one million tourists who visited South Africa in December were from Southern African Development Community countries.

Visitors from Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Mozambique were the most numerous .

Most visitors not from Africa were from the UK .

In December 2012, South Africa recorded 871774 tourists compared to the 937792 registered last December.

According to the report, the number of tourists from "other African" countries increased at a much higher rate of 11.9% between December 2012 and December 2013 compared to tourists from overseas (whose numbers increased by 8.2%) and the SADC (whose numbers rose by 6.6%).

"The main purpose of visits in December 2013 was for holidays.

"A relatively higher proportion of those from North Africa, Asia and the Middle East came for business," said Lehohla.

Annually there has been a general increase in the number of tourists visiting the country.

Last year nearly 10million tourists were recorded .

This was an increase of 3% over the 9million who visited the country in 2012.