Less than half of South Africans would report a crime if they witnessed one – Stats SA

A fresh report states only 43.8% of South Africans would report a crime in progress, while 80.4% feel safe walking around their neighbourhood during the day.

Additionally, 59.3% of respondents were satisfied with their area’s policing but 69% said sentences handed to those guilty of gender-based violence and femicide were too lenient.

These figures come from the Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey 2023/24 presented by Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke on Tuesday, 27 August.

Unwillingness to report crime

The survey estimated that there were 1.5 million incidences of housebreaking, which equates to 5.9% of all households in the country.

However, only 44.1% of survey respondents said that they reported these housebreaking incidents to the police.

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As with housebreaking, only 57.6% of the estimated 263,000 home robberies went unreported, with 53.6% of 506,000 assaults going unreported.

Theft was the least reported crime, with only 28.5% of those experiencing such a crime going on to report the incident.

Limited sample size

The annual Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) report is a population estimate of the level of crime in South Africa based on questions answered by respondents from all nine provinces.

The numbers are not an accurate reflection of the crime stats as the number of interviewed respondents totalled just over 43,000.

However, a detailed breakdown of the individuals interviewed was demographically representative of South Africa’s population.

Respondents are from private residences and the survey did not consider shared living quarters such as old-age homes, prisons or student accommodations.

Protection against crime increasing

The StatsSA report stated that the percentage of respondents taking undisclosed measures to protect themselves from crime increased to almost 40% from just under 30% from the previous year.

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That number was similar to those protecting others, with 43.8% of the individuals saying they would call the police when seeing a crime being committed.

Perceptions were positive, however, with 80.4% saying they felt safe walking alone in their own neighbourhood during the day.

That number gets sliced in half after dark, with only 34.9% feeling the same about walking alone at night.