It’s quite perturbing how many fellow Capetonians aren’t aware how high the Mother City ranks when it comes to crime rates.
So let’s take a look.
The second annual State of Urban Safety Report by the Urban Safety Reference Group and the South Africa Cities Network has once again found Cape Town to have the highest rates of “murder, robbery and property-related crimes in the country,” reports Business Tech.
This is how the reports comes to its conclusions:
The State of Urban Safety report is a consolidated city-level reading of the state of violence and crime in South Africa, which aims to provide an evidence-based set of data to inform policy and practice in making the country safer.
The report identifies key problem cities in the country by looking at crime rates (per 100,000 people – in line with international norms) on a municipal level, rather than by precinct, as reported by the South African Police Service (SAPS).
Cape Town featured as the worst ‘ranked’ in six of the 21 indicators of crime. By way of comparison, Joburg – which has the second worst crime levels – only ranked worst in four categories.
The table below outlines city crime rates across different crime groups:
The report also provided a brief overview of crime levels, compared to the fear of crime in each respective city. In this instance, Cape Town also has the highest recorded level of fear and experience of crime:
Internationally, it’s the murder rate of each city which is used internationally to indicate the overall violence in cities. While Cape Town has improved its murder rate slightly, it still remains the most violent city in the country, followed by Nelson Mandela Bay.
Comparing the report, its data echoes that from international security groups, which shows that Cape Town has one of the highest murder rates in the world – ranking 13th among the most dangerous cities.
Yes. 13th.
These are the national comparative stats:
And just out of interest, here’s the top 20 international cities by murder rate:
But this is the graph you need to see.
Using data recorded since 2005, the graphs shows comparative murder rates per 100 000 people over time (2005 – 2015). Cape Town is in yellow, while the national average is in black:
Put that in your weekend conversation and chew on it.
[source:businesstech]
