“South Africa’s murder stats are those of a country at war”
An opposition MP has said South Africa’s murder rate is what you would expect from a country at war.
South Africa’s crime stats were released on Tuesday and they make for pretty grim reading. Murders increased for the third year in a row and Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard said that they are the figures of a “country at war”.
According to the figures, 17 805 people were murdered between April 2014 to March 2015. In the 2012/2013 period the figure was 16 213. To put this and Kohler-Barnard’s comment into context, the UN say that 220 000 people were killed in the Syrian civil war from March 2011 to January 2015, the Iraq war claimed over 20 000 lives in 2014 while just over 14 000 people were killed in Afghanistan in 2014.
Police Minister Nathi Nhleko said the figures were a reflection of the state of South African society.
There were 194 852 officers, and a police to population ratio of 1 officer to 358 citizens. The UN standard ratio was 1:460.
