Two-thirds of murders go unsolved in South Africa

About two in three murders in South Africa go unsolved due to insufficient evidence or leads, according to official figures released by a governing party on Sunday.

Police closed without result more than 76,000 of the almost 115,000 murder cases that were recorded in the country between the financial year of 2018-2019 and December 2023, the data published by the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) shows.

The number was “strikingly high”, said lawmaker Lisa Schickerling, the DA’s deputy spokeswoman on police matters.

This was partially due to a shortage of trained detectives, itself a result of a lack of funding, she told AFP.

“The workload on the detectives is incredibly high. Most of them have between 350 and 500 cases each,” Schickerling said.

Murders are not the only crimes to go unsolved.

More than 61,000 rape and 9,000 kidnapping cases were also closed without result over the same period, the data given to the DA by the police minister following a parliamentary request showed.

“This is a deplorable state of affairs that requires urgent intervention,” Schickerling said.

South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world. It recorded almost 84 murders a day between October and December last year, according to official figures.

Long the main opposition party, the DA is now part of a broad coalition government led by the long-ruling African National Congress, which lost its absolute majority for the first time in 30 years in a May vote.