Let’s learn how to be safe in South Africa. South Africa is a beautiful place to live and one of the most comfortable and developed countries in Africa. It has cold weather, beautiful landscape, rich forestry and to mention but a few. There’s this one thing that comes to mind of people when they think of South Africa and that’s the high level of crime rate which includes murder, drugs, armed robbery and many more. To be precise a study made by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2012, South Africa was the country with an annual intentional homicide rate of 30 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Not only that, BBC have also reported that South Africa is the ninth highest country in violent crimes.
Read: How To Work From Home In South Africa
Why all this? this is a country of about 50 million people, 11 official languages, over 4 million of the population are of mixed race which includes Asian, Indian and European descent (from Dutch, German, French, and British). The answer to the question is none of this reduced the crime rate in the country. This has to be known, the country is not as bad as people perceive it to be, no where is safe in the world but knowing the right place to be and at the right time saves you from much harm anywhere in the world. This time around we are going to teach you how to survive in this wonderful country without harm.
10 Ways to be safe in South Africa
- Avoid taking a night walk: Walking at night isn’t safe especially as a foreigner. We all know that at night security is a bit low than the day time so its easier for you to be caught in the net of bad people out there and even if you you really want to take a taxi, not any taxi out there but ones recommended by the hotel staffs.
- Lock your car doors: When you stop your car anywhere, make sure you lock it well and if in a traffic lock the windows don’t leave the car door windows down. Please don’t leave any valuable thing inside your car when parked.
- South African cities are far apart from each other, so make sure you fill your fuel tank well before embarking on any journey to avoid being stranded on the road and becoming exposed to any violent people out there.
- Don’t stop for any stranger on the road example hitchhikers so that while you trying to help someone you end up becoming the one that needs help.
- Don’t appear big or flashy: When you appear rich you become a target to thieves or kidnappers. When you have expensive stuff like gadgets or jewelry please hide it away from the public eye in order to be safe.
- When at airports or bus stations, guard your bags well because there are more pickpockets going on there since they are aware there are many foreigners out there.
- Trust no one: Whatever you are doing or whoever you are dealing with please trust no one. You won’t know who is around to hurt you in anyway, therefore to stay safe simply have a little trust for your fellow foreigners whom you came with and not people that are already there.
- While visiting wildlife in South Africa, avoid leaving the vehicle to take a closer look because this are wild animals and can attack you and cause serious damage on your body that might even result death.
- Even at the hotel room you stay don’t open your door any stranger except the hotel management or someone you know too well.
- Have a current map of the country to enable you be aware of the position you are wherever you find yourself to avoid getting lost, only move with the South African officials for tourism to be on the safe side.
