Crime in Johannesburg, South Africa

I guess most of the participants in the crime stats survey on this website are all the white South Africans. Well I just took part in the survey and my response will be totally different from your experiences as I had never experienced rape, violent crime, being mugged, house broken into, car jacked, murder, etc either with my immediate or distant family or friends in the past 20 years. I have had two German white exchange students staying over with us for over a year and nothing happened to them too in the same score period. By the way I stay right next to Alexandra Township.

So I do not buy the notion of SA being one of the most dangerous places to stay in or even visit and the rubbish that Most black South Africans love violence. These stupid stats are all relative and never reflect the true picture of the country. I bet you not all 80% of the black South African population participated in these surveys. I've been to the Brazilian favelas in Rio and Sao Palo and mingling with the locals was one of the best experiences I had and not even a single incident I experienced. But I bet you, you we all misled to believe these favelas are A TO NO GO ZONES. So stop exaggerating every incident and blowing the stats out of proportion just because you experienced it. Not all South African experienced the unfortunate incident that you did and believe that it only happens in SA only. For your information it happens everywhere in the world.

Have you asked yourself if other countries in the world capture and record every single incident reported to their police stations like we do in South Africa. My answer is no, in my last ten years I travelled and spent some time to over 40 African countries and the small incident that take place in their communities are hardly even reported to the police stations, because either the police station is far or the community members deem the incident insignificant to report or its either handled in the local tribal tribunals. So to all the bloody racist white South African, catch a wake up. You stay by far in a more nicer and tolerant, natural disaster free and politically stable country than anywhere else in the world. The guns loving USA you aspire to become or live in has more people dying from guns than our South African murders.

Gregory, oddly they had a very rare murder of a tourist around the time you wrote that — which predictably they're bragging about. They're delighted with this, they want stuff like this to happen because they think it makes them look badass. These are the kind of people you're dealing with and why this part of the site can't be trusted. It is a deliberate deception by a large group of crime-obsessed weirdos who understand very well that other nationalities are ashamed of their crime. This has the dual effect of artificially ballooning South Africa's positions while artificially 'deflating' the rank for almost every other entry. The glaring lack of alerts issued for the country and it's cities (i.e. none) on government travel risk lists worldwide bears that out.

I commend the author of the website. Barring the pointless crime section (not his fault) it's a marvelous effort. I love it. Fantastic stuff and I would recommend it to anyone.

@ Anonymous on Sep 15, 2018 you're right! I didn't know this and checked myself. No travel alerts issued. At all. I'd been confidently told by Saffies repeatedly that they were under some kind of 'warning'? By the Yanks, Aussies, Canadians.....I looked and there isn't a warning issued by any of them. Not sure where that come from lol

The countries you highlighted have them, much of the rest of Africa does as well. You can see why these countries are under an alert if you've experienced them or read up on what happens to tourists. They're in a different league to South Africa.

Ignore the South African pretending to be an American below.

Talking of the good ol' USA, there is Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil right underneath it. The only country you could say SA is slightly better off than is Brazil. The others are comfortably more violent countries.

You can't take a country seriously from a safety point of view when it doesn't have any travel alerts in place.

Tourists are almost never killed or even seriously hurt which is a dead giveaway.

Any crime report (dibyendu Roy)has in your police station (Johannesburg or captown) if find this people then you find usa newjersy.

We all see it everyday and we always turn a blind eye.We concern ourselves when we become the victims of crime. As South Africans we`ve lost our true calling ,we`ve forgotten the power of UBUNTU. We are most safe when we care for each other. If we want to see an end to crime we must start by stopping all acts crime.

I'm an expat living in Fourways and we go to the mall, parks, go running without a fear at all. Never had an issue and amazing place to live! Of course there is crime but just as bad in big american cities like Chicago, Miami and Detroit.

We know why crime is so high in this ghetto don't we?

Hi there

My name is zweli, I currently live in Johannesburg Far East bank near to Alexandra township.
I have a complain about burglers, the house breaking in our location is high and police their hardly patrol in the whole area. so i would appreciate if police patrol time and time in our area, specially midnight cause burglers break in people houses without anyone hearing anything and other thing u can hardly see police in the area and when the is crime in progress and trying to call police they take time to answer the phone or either they answer the phone but their take long to respond. i hope my comment can be heard, crime it's high in our country.