So far this year to September, 19,279 murders were reported in South Africa. Unless December is particularly violent, we are on track to record the first decrease in murders since 2021.

Three women are killed a day by their current or ex husbands, boyfriends, partners or rejected would-be lovers, research by the Gender and Health Research Unit of the SA Medical Research Council found.

The unit has been studying femicide – the murder of women – for the past 20 years. Its latest study was carried out during the first year of Covid, from April 2020 to March 2021.

Although the SAMRC’s estimate of the number of women murdered is lower than that reported by the SA Police Service for the same period, the study gives insight into the perpetrators of the murders in a way the police data does not.

The study estimates femicides as a proportion of the female population of South Africa and each province. In South Africa, the femicide rate is 10.6 per 100,000 women; the Eastern Cape is double that at 21.5 per 100,000 women.

One in three of the women were killed by a firearm. One in six had evidence of sexual violence.

Fewer than one in five of the intimate-partner femicide cases resulted in a conviction.

There was a spike in the number of murders reported by the South African Police Service in March, when 2,550 people were killed, an average of 82 a day.

According to the latest data from the SAPS, one in every five of the 12,734 murders reported in the first half of 2024 were in March. The average number a day for the six-month period is 70, so March is an outlier.

For the past two years, reported murders in the first half of the year have averaged 69 a day.

It’s not clear from the provincial data if the March murders were localised because, as usual, almost half (46%) of the murders reported in March were in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. None of the other provinces showed a notable increase in murders.

The first six months of the year are generally not peak periods for murder in South Africa. Interpersonal violence typically spikes over the festive season because people spend more time together. ‘This leads to more arguments, often fuelled by alcohol and/or drugs,’ says Lizette Lancaster at the Institute of Security Studies. In December last year, 2,846 people were killed.

The number of young inmates in South Africa’s prisons – those under the age of 18 – has dropped by about 83% since 2015/16, according to data from the department of correctional services.

In August 2022, the age of criminal capacity was raised from 10 years of age to 12. The Child Justice Act means that anyone under 12 cannot be arrested and must be referred to a probation officer instead.

Last year, there were 32 children in prison. That’s a six-fold decrease in comparison with the 187 children in prison seven years earlier. Of the young prisoners, just one was a girl.