South Africa's efforts to fight its high crime rate are "not working," Dr Johan Burger, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Studies, said on Saturday.

He told the local newspaper Pretoria News that the high crime statistics released by the government this week bore testament to the fact, and South Africa's murder rate of 37 per 100 000 people could not compare with that in most developed countries, where it was less than two per 100 000.

Burger said the statistics showed that South Africa's other violent crimes, especially those categorized under aggravated robbery, were also cause for serious concern.

"If we look at some crime categories, such as house robberies and business robberies, they increased in all nine provinces - in some provinces as high as 160 percent increases." he said.

"This really paints a very, very serious picture, but more than that it tells us we are not doing the right things to fight these crimes," he added.

Burger criticized the government for delaying the release of the crime statistics for several months. The delay was also questioned by a second member of the debating panel, Dianne Kohler-Barnard, the Democratic Alliance's spokeswoman on safety and security.

She said the increase in business robberies of 42 percent was of particular concern. And the World Economic Forum's latest global competitiveness report ranked South Africa as the worst place to do business, largely because of crime.

Source: Xinhua