One woman killed every three hours in SA – Global Peace Index report

#StopKillingWomen is a hashtag that has flooded social media since the brutal murder and hanging of eight-months-pregnant Tshegofatso Pule and her unborn child.

Gender-based violence (GBV) continues to be on the rise as one woman is killed every three hours in South Africa. This years’ Global Peace Index (GPI), now in its 14th year, indicates that South Africa’s very high violent-crime and homicide rates are a big concern in the safety and security domain.

The Institute for Economics and Peace has released the 2020 Global Peace Index (GPI) and a Covid-19 specific report which tracks and ranks the status of peace in 163 independent states and territories across the world, noting where conflict is rising and falling, and the factors that are influencing change. While global peace is already falling partly because of a rise in civil unrest, the world is at a critical juncture due the economic impact of Covid-19.

These are the GPI’s findings regarding South Africa:

• The country is #123 out of 163 countries as far as a state of peace is concerned.
• Indicators of Safety and Security are an issue in South Africa. It performs particularly poorly on the homicide rate which is the sixth highest in the world, and the second highest in sub-Saharan Africa, ahead of only Lesotho. The average homicide rate in sub-Saharan Africa is 9,1 per 100 000, whereas the homicide rate in South Africa is 35,9 per 100 000, almost four times higher than the regional average.
• In 2019 the cost of violence in South Africa amounted to almost $100 million.
• Global peacefulness continues to deteriorate, with only two of the nine regions in the world becoming more peaceful in 2019.
• Covid-19 has the potential to undo years of socioeconomic development, exacerbate humanitarian crises and aggravate unrest and conflict with its impact already seen in worsening US-China relations and civil unrest across the world.
• In terms of economic pre-conditions, South Africa operates with a high unemployment rate (27 per cent). This is the key factor that reduces the country’s rank in economic pre-conditions.

In all three other factors, South Africa performs remarkably well, having low tax burdens (28,6 per cent of GDP), low dependency on international trade (imports plus imports equalling 60 per cent of GDP) and having low outstanding central government debt (53 per cent of GDP).