About 37,9% of South African residents, felt safe walking alone in the dark.
Last year (2024/25), about 36,1% individuals were recorded, by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA), in their Victims of Crime Report from the Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey (GPSJS) 2025/26.
Limpopo stood out as the province where individuals felt safest, with 98,0% feeling safe walking alone in their neighbourhood during the day and 69,1% feeling safe whilst dark.
Risenga Maluleke, the Statistician-General, said the report found residents may feel relatively safe in their neighbourhoods during the day.
In 2025/26, about 80,7% of individuals said they felt safe walking alone in their neighbourhood during the day, down slightly from 81,0% in 2024/25.
Moreover, the number of people who had done something to protect themselves against crime increased from 43,3% in 2024/25 to 46,6% in 2025/26.
The most common measure was to resort to only walking during safer hours (31,5%) followed by those who installed physical security measures (29,9%), such as burglar doors, to protect themselves against crime.
An estimated 1,5 million incidents of housebreaking were recorded during the year, affecting 5,3% of households across the country.
The most affected households were those led by males, where the head of the home had a post-school qualification.
The most cases were recorded in KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape.
Only about 48% of households affected by housebreaking reported their cases to the police.
This was an improvement of 4,8 percentage points from the previous year; however, it still means that more than half of affected households did not report the crime.
Most personal theft cases added up to 1,4 million incidents, during the year.
Males and individuals living in Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were more likely to experience these thefts.
About 62,7% of victims chose not to report their experience of theft of personal property, while 37,3% reported some of or all the incidents.
Street robbery was the next most common personal crime.
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