Crime stats revisited: Murder, rape and violent crime – these are the numbers

10 September 2019 - 12:29 By Unathi Nkanjeni
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Protesters take part in one of the rallies against SA's culture of violence against girls and women.
Protesters take part in one of the rallies against SA's culture of violence against girls and women.
Image: Esa Alexander

The most recent spate of killings and rape has sparked outrage in SA, with the country having one of the world's highest murder rates.

Here are the stats released last year.

Killing of women 

According to a 2018 Crime Against Women in South Africa Report by Statistics SA, a woman is murdered every three hours.

About 3,000 women were murdered last year - or one every three hours - which is more than five times higher than the global average, according to the World Health Organisation.

Killing of men 

According to the South African Police Service data, 20,336 people were murdered in 2017/2018. The majority of the murder victims were adult men, accounting for 16,421 deaths. This is equal to one murder every 30 minutes. 

Last year, TimesLIVE reported that more than 1,500 people are murdered every month in SA, with 57 people murdered a day.

Femicide in SA compared with other countries

In the same year, TimesLIVE reported that femicide had increased 117% in SA between 2015 and 2016/2017. 

According to the estimates of the survey, 3.3% of men and 2.3% of women said it was acceptable for a man to hit a woman.

The report also found that the murder rates of men and women declined between 2000 and 2015‚ but the murder rate for women more than doubled (117%) between 2015 and 2016/2017.

The number of women who experienced sexual offences doubled from 31‚665 in 2015/2016 to 70‚813 in 2016/2017.

Added to that, the report also found that a third of women feared going to open spaces and parks and more than half of women (54%) felt unsafe walking alone in the dark.


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