Murder rate dips but still around 75 a day: police
The country's murder rate dropped by nearly 10 percent in the final quarter of last year, the police minister said Friday, but killings still averaged 75 a day.
South Africa, with a population of more than 62 million, has one of the highest peacetime per capita homicide rates in the world.
A whopping 6,953 killings were recorded in the last three months of 2024 -- a drop of 757 cases year-on-year, Senzo Mchunu told reporters.
"We have recorded a 9.8 percent decrease in murder cases, a 3.3 percent reduction in rape cases," Mchunu said.
Police figures for the previous two quarters also showed declines in the murder rate compared to previous years.
Despite this "we are not denying that the murder rate is very, very concerning," Mchunu said.
South Africa's murder rate reached a record in the 2023/2024 financial year running from February to March with 27,621 people killed, according to police figures.
Sexual offences, in a country notorious for high levels of rape, decreased by two percent to 14,973 reported cases, the new figures showed. Police however recorded an increase in cases of assault.
Mchunu attributed the falls in certain crimes to "heightened police visibility and strategic operations."
"These crime statistics reflect progress, but they also highlight areas requiring urgent intervention," he said.
Official figures released in August 2024 showed that about two in three murders in South Africa go unsolved due to insufficient evidence or leads.
This was partially due to a shortage of trained detectives, itself a result of a lack of funding, said a representative of the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) party which released the data.
Reacting to the latest figures, the DA said Friday that despite the decreases in murder, common robbery and assault, "crime remains a normalised ill in South Africa".
ALSO READ:
