Wrapping up 2025: a criminological lens

AS 2025 draws to a close, South Africa confronts a complex and often grim criminal landscape.

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While minor improvements in some headline numbers coexist with escalating gang violence in urban centres, shocking mass attacks, renewed public outrage at gender-based violence (GBV) and a high-profile judicial inquiry, the Madlanga Commission is, by virtue of its mandate, exposing alleged political interference and criminal infiltration of the criminal justice system.

Anecdotally, the country, although aware of this infiltration, was silenced through inaction by the very system that, through its constitutional mandate, promises to protect it. However, the rot had to come to light eventually.

A mixed statistical picture, and why numbers don't tell the whole story

Throughout the year, the government released a series of crime statistics updates that presented a mixed picture.

Official quarterly releases in 2025 showed fluctuations across categories. Some headline measures of murder edged down in parts of the reporting period, while attempted murders, violent assaults, carjackings and contact crimes remained stubbornly high in many provinces.

Analysts and civil-society researchers repeatedly warned that even where aggregate murder totals dipped marginally, the scale of violent offending and its human impact remained severe, with pockets of disproportionately high fatalities in several townships and informal settlements.

Two problems complicate any reasonable reading of the numbers. First, under-reporting and uneven reporting practices mean statistics understate many crimes, specifically sexual offences and domestic violence.

Second, pockets of extreme, organised violence (gang wars, heavily armed taxi-related disputes and targeted hits) can make everyday life feel far more dangerous than national averages suggest, a reality borne out by repeated on-the-ground reporting.

GBV: from protests to a national disaster declaration