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As a tourist from anywhere in the economically developed world, I would still make South Africa the #1 country in Africa to visit for a first time visitor to the continent, regardless of its crime.
Coming from the US the idea of a segregated nation, where inner city areas of concentrations of impoverished, disadvantaged, desperate angry male minorities being places of a high crime, that one should avoid, is something that while maybe even worse is at least familiar.
The rest of the continent with poorer physical infrastructure, poorer health facilities/more risk of disease, government instability, etc. are challenges that one must have a much better knowledge of and be more travel savvy.
I'm truly not trying to sound racist. Merely stating that as an American, these are issues that one can more easily understand and be prepared for. That's not to say to just ignore the other countries or write them off, but rather problems of much of the rest of continent are simply more foreign to Americans.
There would be much more incidental health and safety related expenses that one I imagine would have to consider traveling to a less developed nation.
its safe and you will be fine as long as if you don't get over anxious then nothing bad will happen.
Well, the same thing can be said for other unsafe countries like Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras, Brazil, etc., right? Which means, I think your response just isn't specific enough.
Then what makes crime rate(including homicides/murder) in South Africa extremely high? Is gun ownership illegal there??
A lot of the crime is more localised to Gauteng. Basically high poverty + high unemployment = more crime. Since a lot of the money sits in Gauteng, more crime tends to happen here. The difference though is that a lot of the crime can be very violent as the criminals get away with more and more. So it's not uncommon to hear people getting killed when all the robber wanted was the guy's cellphone. I think it's an average of around 45-47 murders per day or something? Basically it happens so often most of them don't even make the news anymore.
Gun ownership is legal but the law is more in favour of the criminal than the citizen. I'm not 100% clued up on it all but it was something like you have to inform the burglar that you have a gun, then fire warning shots and then only once the guy actually attacks you then you are allowed to fire back in self defense.
On top of that our police force can be useless most of the time (not all of them) but there are so many corruption cases and cases where the police just bully the public. Stories of they'll just drop you off outside a township and drive away. They'll pull you over and make up a story how you've had too much to drink and they then suggest a bribe (I've been a victim of this a few times). So public confidence in the police is at a low.
tl;dr
Many factors pushes the crime rate up. I don't see it changing much until the government corruption is sorted out and they start addressing the core issues such as poverty which leads people to that lifestyle. However our current government has already stated that they're going to "rule" until Jesus returns
Basically high poverty + high unemployment = more crime.
This equation appears logical but is certainly not universal.
I've lived in South Africa most of my life and now live in the Philippines where there is more poverty, very high unemployment but far less crime. People here are far less entitled and prepared to work very hard for very little ... not entitled like many South Africans!
This equation appears logical but is certainly not universal.
I've lived in South Africa most of my life and now live in the Philippines where there is more poverty, very high unemployment but far less crime. People here are far less entitled and prepared to work very hard for very little ... not entitled like many South Africans!
True. Perhaps it's a tad oversimplified It's unfortunately quite a complex situation we're in. I mean even if we miraculously voted the ANC out in favour of the DA. It's still going to be a good number of years before we might start seeing any real change (assuming the DA didn't just turn into another ANC)
It's 1 of those things where I really wish I could see SA get better and reach it's real potential, but I have my doubts that I might get to see it in my lifetime
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It's unfortunately quite a complex situation we're in. I mean even if we miraculously voted the ANC out in favour of the DA. It's still going to be a good number of years before we might start seeing any real change (assuming the DA didn't just turn into another ANC)
