The latest official crime statistics for South Africa, released by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Stats SA, reveal alarming trends for the final quarter of 2023/24 (January to March 2024) and the first quarter of 2024/25 (April to June 2024), Cape {town} Etc reports.
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These trends highlight a surge in violent crime across the country.
According to BusinessTech, the delayed release of South Africa’s crime statistics left a six-month gap in public crime data, with the Q4 2023/24 stats missing ahead of the 2024 national elections.
Now, two-quarters of data are available, though trends from Q4 may be outdated.
Examining both quarters together provides insight into crime trends for the first half of 2024, covering January to June.
The data reveals that 12 734 people were murdered during this period—an average of 70 murders per day.
This includes 6536 murders from January to March and 6,98 from April to June.
Year-on-year, this marks an increase of 217 murders compared to the same period in 2023, when 12 517 murders were recorded.
While the latest Victim of Crime Survey from Stats SA highlights that many crimes in South Africa go unreported, murder is one crime that is almost always recorded by SAPS, offering a stark reflection of the country’s violence.
Alarmingly, the survey indicates a surge in murders, with approximately 22 000 recorded in the past 12 months—a 38% increase from the 16 000 reported in the previous survey.
Based on the latest population estimates, this surge equates to a murder rate of 21 per 100 000 people for the first six months of 2024, a figure likely to rise as more data becomes available.
Provincially, the Eastern Cape remains the deadliest region, with murder rates of 17.4 and 17.6 per 100,000 in the final quarter of 2023/24 and the first quarter of 2024/25, respectively.
The Western Cape has reclaimed the second-highest murder rate, overtaking KwaZulu-Natal, which now ranks third.
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