A 5.8% drop in murders reported to the SAPS was announced this week. While we all need good news, it’s helpful to take a longer-term view.

The crime stats follow the SAPS’s financial year, which starts in April. This means Q1 covers April to June, while Q2 is July to September. Change is tracked by comparing the same period over two concurrent years. So in Q2 2024, murders decreased by 5.8% compared with Q2 last year.

This quarter’s murder stats are the highest this year: January to March had 6,536 murders, April to June had 6,198, and July to September had 6,545. But this quarter has recorded the lowest Q2 numbers since 2021: 6,945 murders in 2023, 7,004 in 2022 and 6,163 in 2021.

So far this year to September, 19,279 murders were reported. Unless December is particularly violent, we are on track to record the first decrease in murders since Covid.

Three women are killed a day by their current or ex husbands, boyfriends, partners or rejected would-be lovers, research by the Gender and Health Research Unit of the SA Medical Research Council found.

The unit has been studying femicide – the murder of women – for the past 20 years. Its latest study was carried out during the first year of Covid, from April 2020 to March 2021.

Although the SAMRC’s estimate of the number of women murdered is lower than that reported by the SA Police Service for the same period, the study gives insight into the perpetrators in a way the police data does not.

The study estimates femicides as a proportion of the female population. In SA, the femicide rate is 10.6 per 100,000 women. In the Eastern Cape, it is double that (21.5).

One in three of the women were killed by a firearm. One in six had evidence of sexual violence. Fewer than one in five of the intimate-partner femicide cases resulted in convictions.

There was a spike in the number of murders reported by the SA Police Service in March, when 2,550 people were killed, or an average of 82 a day.

According to the latest data from the Saps, one in every five of the 12,734 murders reported in the first half of 2024 were in March. The average number a day for the six-month period is 70, so March is an outlier.

For the past two years, reported murders in the first half of the year averaged 69 a day.

It’s not clear from the provincial data if the March murders were localised because, as usual, almost half (46%) of the murders reported that month were in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. None of the other provinces showed a notable increase.

The first six months of the year are generally not peak periods for murder. Interpersonal violence typically spikes over the festive season when people spend more time together.

The number of young inmates in South Africa’s prisons – those under the age of 18 – has dropped by about 83% since 2015/16, according to data from the department of correctional services.In August 2022, the age of criminal capacity was raised from 10 years of age to 12. The Child Justice Act means that anyone under 12 cannot be arrested and must be referred to a probation officer instead.Last year, there were 32 children in prison. That’s a six-fold decrease in comparison with the 187 children in prison seven years earlier. Of the young prisoners, just one was a girl.Meanwhile, the number of remand detainees, children in prison while awaiting trial, has increased. In 2021/22, there were 47 and by 2022/23 that had increased to 65.Sentenced youngsters are placed in secure care centres for children managed by the department of social development.

Since the transition to democracy in South Africa, the murder rate has dropped by one third. Last year, the risk of being murdered was 45 murders per 100,000 people. Thirty years ago, it was 68 per 100,000.

Although the rate has fallen, the number of people being murdered is still high. Between April 2022 and March 2023, almost 27,500 people were killed, according to data from the SA Police Service. This is an average of 75 murders a day.

The lowest murder rate in the past three decades was recorded in 2011/2, when it was 30 per 100,000 people. The rate remained in the 30s until a lockdown-related dip in 2020, after which it has taken a steep turn up again.

There are complex factors for the high rate, say researchers, including tightened economic challenges, a drop in police numbers, increased access to firearms as well as a rise in organised crime.

The number of annual murders in South Africa has risen 36% since 2017, but the number of experts qualified to carry out autopsies has remained relatively static with about 50 forensic pathologists working for the state in 2023.

Solving crimes is more difficult without enough forensic experts to analyse the evidence. Forensic pathologist Prof Ryan Blumenthal says the shortage can delay court cases and compromise legal proceedings. ‘Examinations may be rushed due to increased workload [which] might mean evidence is not as reliable, affecting trial outcomes.’

Gauteng and the Western Cape have 16 forensic pathologists each, whereas most other provinces only have 1 or 2. KwaZulu-Natal, SA’s second-most populous province, has 2 forensic pathologists.

In the US, official guidelines recommend that forensic pathologists perform no more than 250 autopsies annually. SA does not have similar standards in place.

A country ideally needs 6 forensic pathologists per million people, says specialist forensic pathologist and author Prof Ryan Blumenthal. Instead of the 330 South Africa should have, there were only about 50 working in the public sector in 2023.

Gauteng, which is home to 15-million people, has 16 forensic pathologists in public service, according to the provincial department of health. In 2023, almost 22,000 bodies – about 60 a day – were admitted for autopsies in the province. This is an increase of 45% from 2006, which is as far back as the data goes.

If they were to have performed all the necessary autopsies, the forensic pathologists would have had to assess 1,367 bodies each. Given that it takes about 3 hours per body (longer in more gruesome or complicated cases), each forensic pathologist would have had to work 12-hour shifts for 7 days a week to get their jobs done.

About 30% of the women killed in almost 1,200 cases in the past 5 years were shot, data collected from media reports shows. And almost 20% of the women in the female murder cases collected by The Outlier were stabbed to death.

The South Africa Police Service released its official crime statistics in February, which show that 3,880 women were murdered in South Africa in 2023. This is an increase of 24% over 2021’s 3,121 cases reported.

The official SAPS data only tracks the number of women killed. Data collected by The Outlier between 2018 and 2023 from reports in English-language media shows that shooting deaths have significantly risen in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal regions in the past two years. There was a sharp increase in shootings recorded in the Eastern Cape last year, partly because of several mass killings in the province.

Rhino poaching in South Africa is better than it used to be, according to numbers released by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. 499 rhinos were killed in 2023, which is 51 more than in 2022, but still a long way off the 1,054 killed in 2016. But poaching in KwaZulu-Natal is rising at an alarming rate, especially in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, run by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.

Since 2021, which is roughly when the Covid pandemic ended, rhino poaching in KwaZulu-Natal has increased by 219%, from 93 rhinos to 325 in 2023. Sadly, 307 rhinos were killed in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park alone, that’s 62% of the national total. Up to 2021, most rhinos were poached in areas run by SANParks, which manages 19 national parks around the country, the largest of which is the Kruger National Park. But poaching numbers in SANParks reserves have been decreasing steadily since 2016. In 2023 there were 78 rhinos killed, all of them in the Kruger Park. 81% of the rhinos were killed on state properties, 19% on privately owned reserves or farms.

The murder rate for women in South Africa has increased from 10 murders per 100,000 women in 2021 to 13 per 100,000 in 2023, according to the latest crime statistics released by the SA Police Service.

Put another way, 3,121 women were reported killed in 2021, which is an average of 8.6 women killed a day. In 2023, this increased to 3,380 women – or 10.6 women reported killed a day.

Female homicide is also increasing globally, with 2022 recording the highest number of women reported killed in the past 20 years, according to a UN Office on Drugs and Crime report. That same year, Africa recorded the highest number of female victims since 2013.

The majority of intentional homicides of women and girls are gender-related, the report states. These can be driven by social norms about masculinity and male entitlement, but there often isn’t enough information to identify what motivated them.

The Western Cape experienced one of its deadliest weeks at the end of September 2023 when 130 people were murdered. This is higher than any other week in the past 5 years, according to police records that The Outlier has been tracking. On average, 83 people are murdered in the province in a week – that's the equivalent of almost 12 people a day. Between 24 and 30 September 2023, Gugulethu recorded the highest number of homicides (13), including 2 incidents in which 10 people were killed. Gugulethu has a police-to-population ratio of 1:874, while the national ratio is 1:413, according to figures from the Western Cape government.

Gautengers are getting friendlier, according to a new survey. Almost 90% now know their neighbours' names and they’re also much more willing (88%) to ask their neighbours to watch their homes than they were three years ago (77.6%). The Statistics South Africa Governance, Public Safety and Justice survey measures the levels of crime experienced by households and individuals. It shows that people are more willing to look out for each other when there are strong community bonds. They’re more likely to report suspicious activity on a neighbour's property and are more willing to watch over each other’s children or homes.

The sentences of almost 9,500 non-violent offenders, including former president Jacob Zuma, were remitted on 11 August. This is the third time Cyril Ramaphosa will release prisoners in an attempt to ease overcrowding in South Africa’s 243 prisons. For the past 10 years, an average of one in three prisoners has not had a bed. About one-third of the 143,000 people in prison in 2021/2 were waiting for their cases to be finalised.

An average of 76 people were murdered a day in South Africa last year, more than three murders every hour.

In 2017, 55 people were killed a day in South Africa. In 2022 that number rose to 74.

Spike in KZN rhino poaching

Murders by month in South Africa

11 women killed a day in SA

Prison Break

9 women killed a day in SA

Gauteng kidnapping soars

KZN precincts show an increase in home robberies

Fewer home robberies reported in Gauteng’s pre-Covid hotspots

Residential burglaries have not returned to pre-Covid numbers

Murders by month in South Africa

A third of inmates in South African prisons are awaiting trial

Rhino poaching going up in KZN

48 cases reported in which police accused of killing their partner

Majority of police reported for killing partners died by suicide

Where are most rhinos poached?