Strange that the question of poverty versus crime levels has not been raised, relative to the rest of Africa.

We have the most murders outside of a war zone. We have 18,000 murers a year - where is the rest of the world. Where are the people protesting in their hundreds like they did to free Tata Mandela. Even in South Africa we either told to leave or told we wingy whites, racist, counter-revolutionary. We shout at each other, accuss each other, wag our fingers at each other and while this is happening we getting potted off one by one. The change will not come from the top, it will come from the ordinary people of this country when we stop looking at each other differently but look at each other as fellow countrymen. Stop telling people to leave and stop telling people they ruining the country because all we doing by that is ruining the country.

It's gonna get worse. Anywhere else but hear. If you can. Leave now.

What would be interesting is a comparison to the stats prior to 1994 ?

I wonder if countries like Nigeria were part of the study - Cause I could swear they definately score worse than us - None the less this is a very disheartening stat for our country. It's true that the only solution that will ever be effective is one that will include the ordinary citizen.

These are disturbing stats. Even more so are the following from the CIA Fact Book:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

Basically the only place in the world less safe to live outside of an active war zone is Columbia. In a war zone the violence tends to be a bit more targeted too.

It is a good Research ever, as a junior researcher my comment is that South Africa is one of the countries with highest diversity unlike others where there are less than 10 cultures. Cultural attitude contribute much in South African crime rate of which we cannot even compare it to Botswana or other African countries. To my perspective South African crime level is coping since Xenophobia never occurred among us as diverse citizens. The regulation by the constitution to my view is getting to be fulfilled but yet need law and strict criminal awareness policies besides bringing back the capital punishment. My solution to this crime inflation which like the petrol price is that the GOVERNMENT can continue to sustain current crime prevention awareness campaigns in its programme and also invest on other initiatives like MILLION MAN MARCH against crime and others to be formulated aimed on crime prevention objective. The encouragement of moral religions can contribute much on crime eradication such as Christianity where in Christians can also pray for the citizens and also for the Government to have crime prevention wisdom and alternative on their decisions.

By Oscar Mpilo

I think it is high time that the citizens of South Africa stop being complacent and stand up for their rights, for a democracy that benefits the well-being of all its citizens and not just favour a particular group. Nowadays criminals have more rights than law-abiding citizens. South Africa is a beautiful country, but it wont matter much if our children have nothing to look forward to. If this violence and corruption is not stopped, we may as well stop being 'proudly South African'.