Five South African cities are among the ten most dangerous in the world

Five of South Africa’s major metros are ranked among the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world to live in, in terms of crime and safety.

This is according to Numbeo’s Mid-Year Crime Index for 2026, which assigns cities a score between 0 and 100 based on people’s perceptions of crime and security.

The Crime Index is compiled biannually and estimates a country’s overall crime level based on user-submitted surveys, with higher scores indicating higher crime levels.

South Africa’s administrative capital, Pretoria, ranked first out of 401 cities polled in the index, with a Crime Index score of 81.7.

The next South African city in the top ten was Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal, coming in third place with a score of 81.5.

Johannesburg was in fifth place with a score of 80.8, followed by Durban in sixth place with a score of 80.5.

Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) was the fifth South African city to crack the top 10, coming in eighth place and holding a Crime Index score of 78.3.

While it did not land in the top 10, the country’s legislative capital, Cape Town, also ranked high on the Crime Index at 16th place with a score of 73.6.

While the Index paints a broad picture of safety among South Africa’s major cities, it has been criticised in the past for relying on perceptions rather than statistical crime data.

Users of Numbeo’s website who participate in the survey are asked a series of questions about how they perceive crime and safety levels in their city.

These responses are filtered for spam and compiled by Numbeo to calculate and assign Crime Index scores for each city.

Crime still a major problem for South Africa

The release of the latest Mid-Year Crime Index coincided with the publishing of South Africa’s official crime statistics for the first quarter of the 2026/27 financial year.

These reports are compiled and released by the South African Police Service at the end of each quarter, with the latest covering the period from April to June 2026.

The latest report indicated that murder had decreased by 5.9% year-on-year, with sexual offences down 0.8% and common robbery down 5.3%.

Attempted murder saw an increase of 8.7% when compared to the same period a year prior, while common assault was up 2%.

Crime and policing expert Dr Mxolisi Mathebula told SABC News that despite declining rates of murder and other serious crimes, South Africans should not celebrate too quickly.

“Particularly looking at the trio of crimes, including carjackings, house robberies, and business robberies,” Mathebula said. “There is nothing there to celebrate.”

“There’s always been an underreporting when it comes to those types of crimes. With crime in general, the statistics are showing a slight decline, but that is not something to brag about.”

Mathebula said the statistics do not accurately reflect the experiences South Africans live through every day, and cautioned that there is still much work to be done.

A report from the Institute for Security Studies, published in November 2025, found that 22% of South Africans trusted the country’s police force.

Mathebula said this was the true reason behind declines in crimes such as robberies, with victims of these crimes becoming increasingly less likely to report them to the authorities.

“In most cases, they don’t even bother to report to the crime scene because of a lack of resources,” Mathebula said. “Those are the problems that we are facing.”

Those who report to the police are mainly those who want case numbers to go claim from their insurance companies. South Africans who don’t have insurance don’t bother to report even TV theft.”