This South African city has now been named one of the most violent places in the world

Buffalo City in the Eastern Cape has joined other major South African metros to be ranked among the most violent cities in the world.

The city has made its dishonourable debut on the annual ranking compiled by the Mexican Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice in association with the Mexican Commission on Human Rights.

The ranking has been compiled annually for over a decade and lists the 50 most violent cities in the world by the number of murders per 100,000 people.

Only cities with populations exceeding 300,000 where murder statistics are available are considered for the ranking, but at least three major South African metros have qualified since 2013.

In the 2024/25 ranking, five South African cities made the cut, again led by Gqeberha, with Buffalo City joining for the first time.

Cape Town, Gqeberha (listed as Nelson Mandela Bay) and Durban have been on the ranking since 2013. Johannesburg entered in 2015.

While Gqeberha leads as the most violent city in South Africa, its position in the global list has improved, falling out of the top 10 to 14th position.

The city’s murder rate—while extremely high—has also improved, dropping to 70.9 murders per 100,000 people.

Durban and Johannesburg have also improved their standings, each seeing murder rates decline compared to 2023—however, Cape Town has gone in the opposite direction, with its murder rate jumping to 70.2 per 100,000 people.

While none of South Africa’s cities feature in the top 10, it must be noted that outside of number one—Port-au-Prince (Port Principe) in Haiti—Cape Town and Johannesburg have an alarmingly high number of murders.

Looking at the sheer number of murders, South African cities occupy three of the top five places, with Cape Town and Joburg second and third overall.

1. Port-au-Prince (Port Principe) in Haiti: 4,263
2. Cape Town: 3,454
3. Joburg: 3,117
4. Guayaquil in Ecuador: 2,478
5. Durban: 2,407

Tracking the data from 2013, it is also alarming to note how murder rates have worsened over the decade.

• Cape Town’s murder rate increased from 51.0 in 2013 to 70.2 in 2024 (an increase of 37.6%).
• Durban’s murder rate increased from 32.4 in 2013 to 58.4 in 2024 (an increase of 80.2%).
• Gqeberha’s murder rate increased from 35.7 in 2013 to 70.9 in 2024 (an increase of 98.6%).
• Joburg’s murder rate increased from 33.3 in 2015 to 49.0 in 2024 (an increase of 47.1%).

The data aligns with local crime stats reported by the South African Police Service.

The SAPS’s latest data shows that South Africa recorded 26,232 murders between January and December 2024, averaging 72 murders every day.

This gives the country an alarming murder rate of 42 per 100,000 people—one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Looking at provincial data, the Eastern Cape (Gqeberha and Buffalo City) has the highest murder rate, followed by the Western Cape (Cape Town), KwaZulu Natal (Durban) and Gauteng (Johannesburg).

Global Ranking South Africa

South African cities featuring on a South American-centric ranking is an anomaly, but shouldn’t be surprising.

The ranking is dominated by South American cities, which are known to be extremely violent places on the global stage.

The only non-South American cities are the five from South Africa and five from the United States.

20 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are Mexican, followed by Brazil with 8; Colombia with 6; South Africa with 5; United States with 5; Ecuador with 3; and Haiti, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago which each have one.

The average murder rate of the 50 cities is 56.8 homicides per 100,000 people, and 21 cities are above that average rate—including every South African city except Joburg.

The Mexican Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice noted that the violence caused by the Russia-Ukraine war and the Middle East conflict is not included in the ranking, as it focuses on criminal violence.