Johannesburg – Almost 900 children were murdered in South Africa from 2015 to 2016, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has revealed.
The new IRR report, released this week, revealed that almost 500 000 South Africans have been murdered since 1994, with children being the most affected.
Over the past decade almost 10 000 children have been murdered.
These are some of the findings from the 2017 South Africa Survey released by the IRR this week.
IRR crime analyst Kerwin Lebone said South Africans lived with horrific levels of violent crime.
“While the murder rate has fallen since 1994, at 31.9 per 100 000 people, it remains one of the highest in the world,” said Lebone.
The country’s murder rate is almost 29 times higher than that in Australia, which is at 1.1 per 100 000 people, according to Lebone.
He said the rate is almost 30 times higher than that in the United Kingdom, and 45 times higher than that in Germany, which are at 1.0 and 0.7 per 100 000 people respectively.
Lebone revealed that the country’s murder rate is almost nine times higher than that in the US, which is at 3.8 per 100 000 people.
Lebone added that South Africa’s murder crisis was so serious that some South Africans were more likely to be murdered than the residents of many terror-affected countries.