Many may not know this, but Cape Town, South Africa is considered one of the most violent cities in the entire world.
An in-depth article on Business Tech unveiled statistics from the top 50 most violent cities in the world. The report considered cities with populations of over 300,000 and focused on murders per 100,000 people in these areas.
“In the 2016/17 iteration, Cape Town ranked 13th with a murder rate of 60.8 per 100,000 people. In 2017/18, the city’s murder rate was 62.3 per 100,000 people,” the site reads. “In terms of the sheer number of murders, Cape Town has the third highest tally among the top 50, with just under 2,500 murders recorded over the period.”
The only two other South African cities cited in the report were Durban and Nelson Mandela Bay. Durban’s murder rate increased from 34.4 per 100,000 in 2016/2017 to 38.1 per 100,000 in 2017/2018. However, Nelson Mandela Bay’s murder rate decreased from 39.2 per 100,000 to 37.5 per 100,000.
It turns out that the majority of the top 50 most violent cities in the world are in Central and South American countries — 42 out of 50 to be exact. A whopping seventeen cities are located within the country of Brazil alone, while three are in Colombia and five are in Venezuela.
Business Tech continued: “As with previous years, the list is dominated by South American cities, where murder rates have climbed in the past year. Los Cabos in Mexico has supplanted the previous ‘most violent’ city, with a murder rate of 111.33 per 100,000 people — but only marginally higher than the former number one, Cracas, Venezuela, which has a murder rate of 111.19 per 100,000.”