**2. Gauteng crime stylised facts**

Crime in South Africa can be traced back to the apartheid era. Although crime can be traced back to the apartheid era, violent crime rose sharply from 1994, and it is continuing even today. An average of 17 000 murders have been recorded for the past three decades [2]. This trend is also the same on murder. The murder related crimes existed since 1950 and rose to the peak slightly before independence, that is 1993. Post-independence murder related crimes declined by an average of 4 percent upto the year 2015 [2]. This was regarded as a significant change considering the high population growth. Currently, the murder related crimes are high but not as high as pre-independency.

Worth mentioning is that national crime trends are more similar in major cities such as Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. However, this study focused on the Gauteng province. The province is dominated by crimes such as robbery (includes car hijacking) and common assault recording an average growth of 2.8 percent and 2.1 percent respectively for the past decade. These two crimes were caused by the abuse of alcohol, domestic violence misunderstandings and firearms ownership [2]. It is reported that the majority of the people that own firearms do not have licenses and are therefore not trained to use them. Sexual offenses and murder were also found to have an average growth of 1.7 percent and 1.4, respectively [2] (SAPS, 2020). Sexual offenses were caused by dysfunctional relationships and the lack of social skills in society. Furthermore, murder was driven by violence, arguments, revenge and community retaliation. Of importance is that unemployment was also found to be the main cause of all these crimes. By its expanded definition, unemployment in Gauteng is recorded at 46 percent [2].
