{"id":271997,"date":"2018-09-18T08:18:40","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T06:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=271997"},"modified":"2018-09-18T08:18:40","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T06:18:40","slug":"heres-how-south-africas-crime-rate-compares-to-actual-warzones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/271997\/heres-how-south-africas-crime-rate-compares-to-actual-warzones\/","title":{"rendered":"Here&#8217;s how South Africa&#8217;s crime rate compares to actual warzones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During his presentation of the annual crime statistics on Tuesday (11 September), police minister Bheki Cele said that a surge in murders has turned South Africa into a place that &#8220;borders on a war zone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to the SAPS, there were 20,336 murders in South Africa between April 2017 and March 2018, showing a 7% increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n<p>This puts the country\u2019s murder rate at close to <strong>36 people murdered per 100,000 population<\/strong> \u2013 with Cele noting that 57 people are being murdered each day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>War zone<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>South Africa had the fifth highest murder rate in the world in 2015, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime&#8217;s (UNOCD) most recent data.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at this UNOCD data, as well as data provided by the International Institute for Strategic Studies&#8217; (IISS) Armed Conflict Survey, the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-45547975\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BBC<\/a> <\/strong>has now compared how South Africa&#8217;s murder rate compared to armed conflict zones.<\/p>\n<p>The IISS&#8217; data includes conflict-related deaths and victims of terror attacks where the perpetrators of the attack are part of a conflict &#8211; but excludes murders outside of the conflict.<\/p>\n<p>It then estimated the overall rate for each country using the World Bank&#8217;s population figures. This measure gives an indication of the extent to which the whole country is affected by conflict.<\/p>\n<p><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/South-Africa.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-272005 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/South-Africa.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"417\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/South-Africa.png 624w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/South-Africa-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Somalia, where government troops backed by the African Union are fighting al-Shabab militants, the IISS recorded 5,500 conflict-related deaths in 2017, which is a rate of <strong>38.4 per 100,000 people<\/strong>. That&#8217;s higher than South Africa, even excluding homicides.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>For Afghanistan, there were 14,000 deaths last year in the conflict between insurgent groups and pro-government forces. That&#8217;s a rate of <strong>40.4\u00a0per 100,000 people<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>IISS uses the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights&#8217; death toll figure for the Syrian conflict, which reported 39,000 deaths in 2017. That&#8217;s equivalent to <strong>212 per 100,000 people<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In Yemen there were 17,000 deaths &#8211; a rate of <strong>61.6\u00a0per 100,000 people.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In Iraq, there were 15,000 conflict-related deaths &#8211; a rate of <strong>40.3\u00a0per 100,000 people.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Looking at the above it is clear that while the overall murder rate in South Africa is very high &#8211; the level of killing is lower than in all the conflict-affected countries considered even without taking into account non-conflict related murders in those countries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8216;Crime areas&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While crime on a national level cannot be compared to a conflict zone, the BBC noted that the stats point to\u00a0a very different story when looking at specific areas.<\/p>\n<p>It pointed to the fact that while there are 1,144 police station precincts across the country &#8211; 20% of all the murders were recorded at just 30 stations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;According to ISS&#8217; Crime Hub, several precincts have a murder rate estimated at more than 100 per 100,000. That&#8217;s higher than in most of the war zones considered above,&#8221; the BBC said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Philippi East, a township of Cape Town, the rate was estimated at 323.4 per 100,000. It was 214.52 in Madeira in the Eastern Cape province and 177.3 at Pietermaritzburg&#8217;s central city station in KwaZulu-Natal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong> Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/270771\/this-is-south-africas-murder-capital\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">This is South Africa\u2019s murder capital<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During his presentation of the annual crime statistics on Tuesday (11 September), police minister Bheki Cele said that a surge in murders has turned South Africa into a place that &#8220;borders on a war zone.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":161761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-271997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271997"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272019,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271997\/revisions\/272019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}