The report shows a downfall in murder rates and then a small peak in 2014. South Africa has been facing several different crisis moments within the last years. In fact refugees tend to get a lot of tension because South Africans believe they are here to steal their jobs, money, land, or any open opportunity. The database doesn’t show what exact incidents are leading to the amount of deaths each year but there are several possible trends that could lead to them.
A huge issue in South Africa is xenophobia. Xenophobia is defined as intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries. The number of refugees in South Africa continue to rise and the violence and attacks towards them continues as well. For example, 35-year-old Nhamuave became known as the “burning man” and photographs of his death brought the horror of South Africa’s xenophobic violence to the world. Nhamuave’s case ended with no suspects of witnesses although in the photographs taken show large crowds in the area. Around that time period there was an amount of 62 deaths within two weeks. Similar situations continue to happen before the account of murders in 2005 but somehow don’t receive much attention.
The racial and ethnic tensions that seem to take place very often in South Africa. Several incidents have led up to violent murder cases or arrest that later lead to a “homicide”. A lot of social injustice cases going on, while in SA I followed one where a student was arrested from an peaceful protest #FeesMustFall concerning education has been in jail since Sept. He has a new court date in Jan. but depending on the decisions a lot of actions, protests and more can spring from it.
Now from The Code of South Africa you can see [the number of murder cases](https://data.code4sa.org/resource/fgg4-qjnk.csv?$where=crime = “Murder”&$select=year, sum(incidents)&$group=year&$order=year) the police reported between 2015-14.
Another issue is statelessness, which is when a person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its laws. Statelessness in South Africa prevents millions from the simple day-to-day freedoms a citizen can enjoy, particularly one man who has traveled and worked around the world. When someone is stateless they are not accounted for which in the government, state or anything else that collects data.
South Africa is slowly losing count for everyone that is in their country so the true number of murders and deaths may not all be accounted for.
Check out the webpage Police Statistics— the full amount of crimes accounted for since 2005.