The State of Urban Safety in South Africa Report 2024

The South African Cities Network, together with its partners, the GIZ and Global Affairs Canada (GAC) is delighted to present the fifth edition of The State of Urban Safety in South Africa Report (SOUS). The 2024 Report, updating on trends and highlights the work of the Urban Safety Reference Group (USRG) in the period 2022 – 2024, also marks the 10th anniversary of our collective efforts as cities to learn, share, exchange, test practices and produce knowledge and evidence to improve city-level safety governance, under the banner of the USRG.

The 5th Report contributes to the USRG’s longstanding objective to provide cities with an authoritative, incremental and longitudinal view of crime and violence to support evidence-based decision-making. In the last edition of ‘state of’ reporting, the USRG began to spatialize crime data; showing the true distribution of crime type per city, which is incredibly empowering for planning, collaboration, budgeting and targeting, especially in the context of limited resources.

This edition departs slightly from the regular format of previous ‘State of Urban Safety’ Reports as it reflects on the last 10 years of city-led, structured engagement on the topic of urban safety. While it updates on city crime trends, relevant policy and profiles exemplary practices from South Africa’s largest cities, this edition is especially exciting as it gives the reader a clearer sense of what safety is. Safety is not just a state of security: it is about our sensory experience of the public realm as well—what it smells, sounds, looks and feels like when we feel safe or unsafe.

This Report also engages with the state of safety practice in South African cities and celebrates the small but impactful contributions of the USRG in promoting partnered approaches and advocating the institutionalization of gender-responsive, area-based and long-term preventive approaches to safety.

Among its highlights, the report profiles the USRG’s intervention in Hammanskraal and the importance of community engagement, design that is informed by community and user experiences, building trust in government as contributors to community safety. The case study demonstrates the necessity of deeply and meaningfully engaging communities (investing in soft infrastructure) so that public expenditure and the investment of hard infrastructure can improve lives. Furthermore, by focusing on the public realm and environmental design, collaborating with community stakeholders as local experts, the safety of all can be enhanced.

The USRG’s work stream on GBV prevention at the city level demonstrates how cities can work with and harness the energy of youth in organized and semi-organized community structures. The focus on youth arises from objective evidence pointing to the need to engage this demographic, which shoulders the highest incidence of victimhood and are among the highest percentile of people that perpetrate crime and violence. Thus, a need to engage youth on GBV, particularly also given the mounting evidence that schools are increasingly sites of violence. Furthermore, that youth between the ages of 18-24 are alarmingly affected by GBV necessitates this focus.

Equally, youth are actively involved and motivated to innovate and find solutions in their localities. It is critical to harness this potential. As the work of the USRG, such as the Innovation Competition on Youth-led GBV Prevention in Public Spaces demonstrates, there are many inspiring initiatives by youth to create safer cities and communities.

The USRG is also excited to, for the first time, issue 4 web stories to complement the written Report. These short reels help the understanding of the key themes of ‘evidence’, ‘working together’, ‘area-based interventions’ and ‘safer cities for women’, and their centrality each, in making cities that are safe for all.

This edition is the culmination of 10 years of learning-based and action-driven partnership for which the SACN expresses immense gratitude to the Inclusive Violence and Crime Prevention (VCP) Programme of the GIZ as it draws to a close.

Utilising the momentum of 10 years of partnership and support, the SACN calls for the networks and connections generated through this investment, to grow from strength to strength and to truly embody the transversal, all-of-society and whole-of- government approaches that have been central to the USRG’s advocacy.