A NEW report that claims Cape Town is the most dangerous city in the world outside the Americas has been widely criticised in South Africa for portraying a “severely distorted” picture of the renowned tourist destination.
Mexican NGO the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice released a study on Monday which ranked Cape Town as the world’s 34th most violent city in 2011, when it compared cities with more than 300,000 residents for which homicide statistics were available on the internet.
Five of the 10 most violent cities are Mexican, with the others in Latin America and the US.
The most violent city in the world, said the report, was San Pedro Sula in Honduras, with 159 murders per 100,000 people. San Pedro Sula was followed by Ciudad Juarez in Mexico and Maceio in Brazil.
The cities in the top 33 spots were all in North and South America, but surprisingly Cape Town came in 34th, with a murder rate of 46 per 100 000 people.
The South African cities of Durban and Johannesburg have always been viewed as the country’s most dangerous urban places, but they ranked 49th and 50th respectively with murder rates of 30.50 and 30.54 per 100,000 people.
However, Cape Town authorities were quick to question the accuracy of the report, with JP Smith of the city’s mayoral committee for safety and security saying the study was “severely distorted” and the work of “panic-mongers”.