Hijacking hotspots in South Africa: the SAPS station figures

Gauteng: 21 of the top 30

Gauteng recorded 2 207 carjackings in the quarter, 57,9% of the national total, and 21 of the 30 worst stations are in the province, with 839 between them.¹ Johannesburg District has ten of them, from Alexandra and Eldorado Park to Bramley, Sandringham and Honeydew. Ekurhuleni has five, led by Ivory Park and Kempton Park, Tshwane has five, led by Mamelodi East, and Sedibeng has one, Orange Farms.

Alexandra moved the most. It recorded 62 carjackings, up from 27 a year before, the largest rise of any station on the list, and back near the 63 it recorded in the same months of 2022. Cosmo City, also in the Johannesburg District, had none in April to June 2022 and 41 this year.¹

Cape Town: Delft tops the country

Delft recorded 93 carjackings, the most of any police station in South Africa and its highest April-to-June count of the five years SAPS shows: 48 in 2022, 46 in 2023, 72 in 2024 and 68 in 2025.¹

All five Western Cape stations on the list are in the City of Cape Town District, and between them they recorded 254 of the province’s 548 carjackings, close to half. Nyanga shows how far a station can fall: it recorded 104 in April to June 2022, more than any station on this year’s list had then, and 33 now.¹

KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape

Umlazi, in eThekwini, is KwaZulu-Natal’s highest station and sixth in the country with 53. Cato Manor, also in eThekwini, rose from 12 to 31 and is 25th.¹

In Mpumalanga, Vosman in the Nkangala District climbed to eighth, with 50 against 23 a year before. The Eastern Cape’s only station on the list is New Brighton, in the Nelson Mandela District, 16th with 37, while the province as a whole recorded 195 carjackings, 44,4% fewer than a year earlier. No station in North West, Limpopo, the Free State or the Northern Cape makes the top 30.¹

Where carjackings rose and fell

Nationally, carjackings fell 18,2%, from 4 657 in April to June 2025 to 3 811, and every province recorded fewer.¹ The worst stations moved the other way: the top 30 recorded 1 264 between them, against 1 192 at the same stations a year earlier. Thirteen of them went up, fifteen went down and two stayed level.¹

The biggest rises were at Alexandra (+35), Vosman (+27), Delft (+25), Cato Manor (+19) and Ivory Park (+18). The biggest falls were at Nyanga (−16), Olievenhoutbosch (−14), and Jeppe and Sandringham (−12 each).¹

Carjackings by province

All nine provinces, April to June, with the change written the way SAPS writes it. Where a province’s numbers are small, SAPS gives the difference in counts rather than a percentage.¹

How to read the SAPS figures

SAPS defines carjacking as taking a motor vehicle from its owner by force, trucks excluded; truck hijacking is a crime category of its own. Its figures are “the number of charges or counts and not the number of case dockets registered”.³

The list ranks police stations, so each number is what one station recorded over three months, and it says nothing about which make or model was taken. SAPS does give the type of vehicle: of the 3 788 hijackings it classified for the quarter, 1 552 were sedans, hatchbacks or coupés, 1 083 were bakkies or panel vans, 386 were SUVs or station wagons, 360 were motorcycles and 268 were minibuses.⁴

These figures don’t give the time of day. The nearest we found is from an insurer: Atang Matebesi, CEO of Santam Client Solutions, said in July 2025 that “most hijackings occur on Friday evenings between 16h00 and 21h00”, without saying where that pattern comes from.⁵

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