Cape Town has been ranked 19th on Numbeo’s list of most dangerous cities in the world for 2020.
According to the Numbeo list, Cape Town is way behind Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, Durban, and Johannesburg which occupy third, forth, fifth and sixth place respectively.
Whilst we welcome any list that proclaims our City safer than most, the Numbeo’s list begs some serious questions especially considering the proliferation of gang violence that rocked the mother city making international headlines and prompting the deployment of the army.
Moreso, Numbeo’s list is ‘user generated’ meaning users on the site fill in surveys and the responses make up the various index available on the site. It does not follow conventional crime stats used to measure crime in a particular areas.
For example, SA official crime stats measure the actual reported crime incidents in an area, and in these sort of stats, Cape Town is usually up there with the worst.
You just have to look at the official crime stats from last year to appreciate the difference.
The site says the, Crime Index is
an estimation of overall level of crime in a given city or a country. We consider crime levels lower than 20 as very low, crime levels between 20 and 40 as being low, crime levels between 40 and 60 as being moderate, crime levels between 60 and 80 as being high and finally crime levels higher than 80 as being very high.