Murders drop in South Africa but crime rates still high

Murders, rapes and other violent crimes in South Africa dropped during the past year but remained at alarmingly high levels, the country's safety and security minister said.

The government has intensified its bid to fight violent crime ahead of the 2010 soccer World Cup. About half a million tourists are expected to visit during the tournament.

Annual crime statistics showed the number of murders fell 4.7 per cent between April 1, last year and last March 31, with 18,487 murders reported in the country of 50 million, but the rates remain among the worst in the world.

A total of 36,190 rapes were reported during the latest 12-month reporting period, an 8.8 per cent drop from the previous year. Attempted murders also were down 7.5 per cent.

"Government is still concerned that, while they are going down, the levels of crime continue to be unacceptably high," Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula told a news conference in Pretoria.

He noted that the government had hoped to see a bigger drop in serious crime, in part because of its move to put more police officers on the streets.

There was also a general rise in robberies, with break-ins and hold-ups at stores and other businesses shooting up almost 50 per cent.

There were 602 more carjackings, one of the crimes often on the minds of South Africans, in the period.

Tackling crime is one of the biggest challenges facing the ruling African National Congress, which tends to blame the high rates of violent crime on poverty and other problems that it says are a holdover from the apartheid era, which ended in 1994.

Critics say corruption and other flaws in the justice system have allowed many criminals to evade prosecution, with cases often being thrown out of court for lack of evidence and poor investigative procedures by police officials.

Opposition parties and business leaders say that, if left unchecked, high levels of crime could deter tourism and foreign investment in Africa's biggest economy and derail its chances of hosting a successful World Cup, which begins on June 11, 2010.