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Yesterday The Common Sense analysed the number of murders in South Africa’s three biggest cities, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and eThekwini, against the number of murders in the European Union (EU). It showed that the three cities together recorded more murders in the 2024/25 reporting period than the entire EU did over a similar period.

The murder rate across the three cities was also about sixty times higher than in the EU, showing the extraordinary scale of lethal violence in South Africa’s major urban centres.

Of the three cities, Cape Town was the most dangerous, both in terms of the absolute number of murders and its murder rate. More than 3 500 murders were committed in the city during 2024/25, giving it a murder rate of more than 70 per 100 000 people. South Africa’s overall murder rate during the period was 41 per 100 000.

But that citywide figure conceals an extraordinary divide.

Philippi East recorded a murder rate of 258 per 100 000, while neighbouring Philippi recorded a rate of 218 per 100 000, making these two of the most violent places in the country.

Yet elsewhere in the same city, Sea Point, Camps Bay, and Rondebosch recorded no murders at all during the same reporting period. The Sea Point and Rondebosch precincts both serve more than 10 000 people, while Camps Bay serves around 6 500.

Rondebosch is only about 10km from Philippi East. Sea Point is roughly twice that distance away. Yet residents of these places effectively inhabit completely different worlds when it comes to the risk of violent death.

Cape Town is also unique among South Africa’s three biggest cities in this respect. It was the only one of the three with precincts serving more than 10 000 people that recorded no murders during the period.

The chart below shows the murder rate in selected precincts in Cape Town.

Cape Town is not unique in having precincts that are very violent.

Of the 10 police precincts with the highest murder rates among those with populations above 10 000, five are in South Africa’s three biggest cities.

These are Johannesburg Central (murder rate of 434 per 100 000) and Jeppe (325 per 100 000), both in Johannesburg; Philippi East (murder rate of 258 per 100 000) and Philippi (murder rate of 218 per 100 000), both in Cape Town; and Durban Central (murder rate of 246 per 100 000) in eThekwini.

[The analysis is limited to precincts with more than 10 000 residents because murder rates become unreliable at very small population sizes. Maydon Wharf, in eThekwini, for example, has just 60 recorded residents, so its two murders in 2024/25 produced a rate above 3 300 per 100 000, the highest in the country. That says more about the tiny population than the actual level of danger. A 10 000 resident cut-off keeps smaller towns in the analysis while excluding precincts where per capita rates are too volatile to be meaningful.]

The chart below shows the precincts with populations above 10 000 that have the highest murder rates.

[Treat the figures for Johannesburg Central, Jeppe, and Durban Central with caution. The murder counts are likely accurate, the population numbers for them may not be. All three are dense inner-city precincts with large homeless and transient populations that a census is known to undercount – so the real murder rate is probably lower than these numbers show, even if these three places remain genuinely dangerous.]

But it is the contrast inside Cape Town which is the most striking. Within a relatively short drive, the city moves from precincts recording no murders at all to communities where more than 200 people are murdered for every 100 000 residents.

This is what enclavisation looks like in practice. South Africans living within the same city increasingly experience radically different levels of safety, with some communities protected by layers of security beyond the national police service, including private security, community patrols, and secure estates.

Cape Town and the Western Cape are also unusual in that their municipal and provincial governments have sought to take a greater role in public safety rather than leaving the problem entirely to the South African Police Service (SAPS). The clearest example is the Law Enforcement Advancement Plan, which deploys additional law enforcement officers into violent crime hotspots.

The City now also wants to establish its own detective capability to investigate serious crimes and help turn arrests into successful prosecutions.

Municipal police are currently prevented by national law from carrying out criminal investigations, leaving those powers with SAPS. Cape Town therefore cannot simply give its officers full detective powers itself.

The City has repeatedly asked the national government to change this and has now declared an intergovernmental dispute over investigative powers. That means a city that is willing to spend more of its own money and deploy more of its own personnel to fight crime is still constrained by a highly centralised policing system that limits what those officers can do once a crime has been committed.

That matters particularly in a city where the difference between one precinct and another can be the difference between recording no murders in a year and experiencing a murder rate above 250 per 100 000.

As SAPS struggles to provide effective policing, safety is increasingly determined by where South Africans live and by the ability of provincial, municipal, community, and private institutions to build additional layers of protection around them. Cape Town’s experience suggests that the next step may be allowing capable local governments to do more than patrol the streets. It may also mean allowing them to investigate the crimes committed on those streets.