[imagesource: Ralph Lee Hopkins / Nat Geo]

Depending on how you look at the results of Numbeo’s 2020 crime index, there is either bad news or good news.

The good news for Capetonians is that we are not ranked as South African’s most dangerous city, despite the fact that we were recently ‘crowned’ the murder capital of the continent.

The bad news, for South Africans as a whole, is that our country is ranked as the third most dangerous country in the world, with four of our cities cracking the top 10.

With all of the above, it is important to note that Numbeo’s Crime Index is based on a survey of 77 000 people, with BusinessTech reporting that “it does not deal with actual crime stats, but rather how safe and secure citizens feel in their cities”.

For me, that means the Index carries a massive asterisk, but let’s carry on with the results:

Globally, South Africa ranks third, up from fourth place in 2019, and below only Venezuela and Papua New Guinea.

South Africa is one of five African nations ranked in the top 20 most dangerous countries – ahead of Namibia, Angola, Nigeria and Libya – and ranks ahead of war torn nations including Afghanistan (fourth) and Syria (12th).

Overall, the highest scoring crime category for South Africa is corruption and bribery.

Via Numbeo, here’s a look at the full top 10 most dangerous countries:

Not a great look, is it?

If you use the same Numbeo stats and look at cities, in particular, this is the top 20:

That’s Cape Town in 17th, well below Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, Durban, Johannesburg, and Port Elizabeth.

PE might be dubbed ‘the friendly city’, but its residents seem to live in fear.

Whilst the global survey garnered 77 000 responses, South Africa only accounted for 2 300 of them, so each of our cities has a really small sample size.

I guess what I’m saying is that I find these results rather flawed.

I don’t know what kind of criminality the residents of Pietermaritzburg, which much of the country looks at as a ‘sleepy hollow’ of sorts, face in their daily lives, but I’m not sure it outranks Cape Town or Jozi.

Numbeo’s various data points can be explored here.

[sources:businesstech&numbeo]