This is the safest place to live in SA, based on News24’s CrimeCheck app
This is the safest place to live in SA, based on News24’s CrimeCheck app
- South Africa’s safest police precinct is Mpisi in KwaZulu-Natal.
- Based on News24’s CrimeCheck, only 60 crimes took place among Mpisi’s population of 25 564 last year.
- Cape Town Central had the highest rate of crime out of more than 900 precincts.
Where’s the safest place to live in South Africa? It appears to be any of the areas that fall under the Mpisi police precinct in KwaZulu-Natal, according to News24’s CrimeCheck application.
CrimeCheck is designed to help South Africans understand their risk of becoming a victim in a country where crime levels are among the highest in the world. Using hundreds of thousands of official crime statistic records from 1 158 policing precincts, between 2017 to 2022,
CrimeCheck provides a gauge of risk on a series of crime indices as well as on several individual crimes like murder and burglary. The rate of crime is calculated per 1 000 people in a police precinct or 1 000 households in a precinct.
Based on the 17 categories classified by the South African Police Service as serious crimes (including murder, rape, aggravated robbery and burglary, among others) in 2021, the safest policing precincts are Mpisi in KwaZulu-Natal, as well as Kwandengane and Hlababomvu in the Eastern Cape.
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With a population of 25 564 people, Mpisi recorded only 60 incidents of crime for the year. Kwandengane recorded 84 crimes among its 31 178 residents and there were 98 crimes in Hlababomvu, which has a population of 35 261.
The most dangerous precincts – where residents have the highest risk of becoming victims of crime – are the Cape Town Central precinct, as well as Pietermaritzburg and Durban Central.
With a population of 45 093 people, Cape Town Central experienced 7 493 crimes last year. Pietermaritzburg had about half that amount, with 3 728 crimes reported among its 24 246 residents. Durban Central, with a population of 55 015, recorded 7 573 crimes.
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The ranking is based on precincts that have a population greater than 9 753. This is the threshold which captures 80% of all precincts (928 precincts out of 1 159) while removing those that have small populations.
Police precincts do not follow any other geographic boundary in South Africa, such as wards or suburbs, so there are no readily available population numbers for each precinct.
CrimeCheck has used a Geographic Information Systems mapping expert to calculate populations per precinct each year, based on the last available Census data and district-level population estimates by Statistics South Africa.
