I was mainly commenting on the parts of your post that dealt with government disfunction, corruption etc. Framing the murder rate as suffering "due to poverty"

I was mainly commenting on the parts of your post that dealt with government disfunction, corruption etc. Framing the murder rate as suffering "due to poverty" in the context of South Africa doesn't pass the sniff test. Indonesia's GDP PPP is similar to SA's, but it's safer than some western European countries in terms of murder rate. Closer to home, Namibia has compatible income inequality, but around a third of the murder rate. In South Africa around 70% of murder victims knew the perpetrator [1]. It seems safe to assume that most of that's within a similar income bracket. Just that statistic seems to discount some wider societal forces as the primary driver. 1. https://issafrica.org/iss-today/what-do-we-know-about-murder-in-south-africa https://issafrica.org/iss-today/what-do-we-know-about-murder...