SA's rating is a crime

Once again, South Africa is slipping in the world rankings. It's very disappointing. We have fallen to fifth position on the crime rate by country list.

- BEN TROVATO CUT&RUN

Four years ago, we were sitting at a respectable third, hot on the heels of Papua New Guinea and within stabbing distance of Venezuela.

On Monday, the police minister—who got his grounding in maintaining law and order as a teacher at government schools—released the crime stats for July to September, revealing a worrying drop of 5.8% in the murder rate in just three months.

What's going on here? Are victims fighting back? It seems unlikely. South Africans have been getting themselves murdered at an impressive rate—more than half a million since democracy ushered in a new era of peace and stability—and there's no evidence to suggest they have learned how to ward off those with murderous intent.

This suggests that our countrymen could be losing interest in the ancient art of slaughtering their fellow humans. Times are hard, and not everyone can afford a gun as well as bullets. Then there is the question of fitness. Bludgeoning can be hard work and it's not always worth raising a sweat or risking a pulled muscle for anything less than an iPhone 16.

However, there was a 2.2% rise in attempted murder, which means the trainee butchers in the informal sector are at least working on upgrading their skills. Keep going, lads. Don't give up now. The important thing is that you keep trying.

And while our homicidal maniacs might be saving their energy for the Christmas rush, robbers who are aggravated by circumstances like poverty, too much nyaope and so on, had a bumper three months, pushing up their rate by a laudable 8.8%.