South Africa
South Africa Rated Worse Than African War Zones for Organised Criminality — New Index Shows
South Africa’s criminal landscape is now more severe than that of several active African war zones, according to the Africa Organised Crime Index 2025, released by the EU-funded ENACT programme and compiled by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Interpol, and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC).
Mark Shaw, Executive Director of GI-TOC, said the project’s extensive information base provides “an unprecedented overview of illicit economies across the continent”.
The report highlights striking regional variations in criminal markets. East Africa records high levels of human trafficking, arms trafficking, and human smuggling, while North Africa is identified as a global hub for the illicit cannabis trade and ranks second worldwide for financial crimes. Central Africa is dominated by non-renewable resource crimes, West Africa by the cocaine trade, and Southern Africa by wildlife trafficking.
Organised crime is increasingly driven by state-linked actors, with nearly half of African countries reporting severe state involvement. Foreign criminal networks, especially in West Africa, are also expanding their footprint.
Overall, the continent has seen a sharp rise in organised crime since 2019, accompanied by weakening state resilience. Almost every African country is classified as having low resistance to organised crime, and 23 states face the particularly damaging combination of high criminality and low resilience. Financial crimes, human trafficking, arms trafficking, non-renewable resource crimes, and counterfeit goods remain the most widespread illicit markets.
The report also warns that Africa’s accelerating digital adoption has fuelled a surge in cybercrime, notably online financial fraud and ransomware attacks across four of the continent’s five regions. It notes that democratic states generally respond more effectively to organised crime, while authoritarian governments often either facilitate it or crush it through violent crackdowns.
South Africa’s Deepening Crime Crisis
South Africa features prominently in the 2025 index due to entrenched gangs, extensive financial crimes, corruption, and mafia-style networks that exert severe influence across the country.
The report traces the roots of the problem back to rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, which fuelled a rise in urban criminality in major cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, and Durban. Early loosely organised street gangs evolved into more structured and violent criminal enterprises by the 1980s, influenced by shifting social and political dynamics.
Today, these mafia-style groups operate across the country, engaging in armed robbery, extortion, hijackings, drug trafficking, and smuggling. Their influence has severely undermined social stability and state institutions.
South Africa also serves as a key transit hub in the regional heroin trade. Northern KwaZulu-Natal’s proximity to Mozambique enables cross-border smuggling, while Gauteng — including Johannesburg and Pretoria — functions as a major distribution centre. In Cape Town, heavily armed drug and extortion gangs exert tight control over neighbourhoods, with ongoing turf wars producing chronic levels of violence that resemble low-intensity armed conflict.
Second-Highest Criminality Score in Africa
According to the index, South Africa now ranks second on the continent for overall criminality — scoring worse than conflict-torn states such as Sudan, Somalia, Mali, Niger, and the Central African Republic. The findings highlight the scale of South Africa’s organised crime crisis and its growing impact on national stability and public safety.
| Rank | Country | Criminality Score |
| 1 | Congo, Dem. Rep. | 7.47 |
| 2 | South Africa | 7.43 |
| 3 | Nigeria | 7.32 |
| 4 | Kenya | 7.18 |
| 5 | Libya | 7.05 |
| 6 | Central African Republic | 7.03 |
| 7 | Uganda | 6.65 |
| 8 | Mozambique | 6.63 |
| 9 | Sudan | 6.63 |
| 10 | Somalia | 6.55 |
| 11 | South Sudan | 6.42 |
| 12 | Mali | 6.33 |
| 13 | Cameroon | 6.18 |
| 14 | Burkina Faso | 6.03 |
| 15 | Ethiopia | 6.03 |
| 16 | Chad | 6.00 |
| 17 | Niger | 5.93 |
| 18 | Tanzania | 5.93 |
| 19 | Madagascar | 5.83 |
| 20 | Côte d’Ivoire | 5.78 |
| 21 | Ghana | 5.77 |
| 22 | Liberia | 5.65 |
| 23 | Angola | 5.62 |
| 24 | Zimbabwe | 5.55 |
| 25 | Sierra Leone | 5.42 |
| 26 | Morocco | 5.37 |
| 27 | Egypt | 5.30 |
| 28 | Senegal | 5.22 |
| 29 | Togo | 5.22 |
| 30 | Benin | 5.15 |
| 31 | Guinea | 5.05 |
| 32 | Congo, Rep. | 5.03 |
| 33 | Algeria | 4.97 |
| 34 | Guinea-Bissau | 4.88 |
| 35 | Djibouti | 4.85 |
| 36 | Zambia | 4.78 |
| 37 | Burundi | 4.73 |
| 38 | Gabon | 4.70 |
| 39 | Tunisia | 4.68 |
| 40 | Gambia | 4.58 |
| 41 | Lesotho | 4.52 |
| 42 | Namibia | 4.43 |
| 43 | Mauritania | 4.40 |
| 44 | Equatorial Guinea | 4.37 |
| 45 | Eswatini | 4.25 |
| 46 | Mauritius | 4.23 |
| 47 | Botswana | 4.17 |
| 48 | Malawi | 4.17 |
| 49 | Cabo Verde | 4.08 |
| 50 | Eritrea | 3.92 |
| 51 | Rwanda | 3.87 |
| 52 | Comoros | 3.83 |
| 53 | Seychelles | 3.65 |
| 54 | São Tomé and Príncipe | 1.80 |