The honest entry
Cape Town areas to avoid
Short answer: do not base yourself in the Cape Flats townships, do not walk the CBD Foreshore or Woodstock towards Salt River after dark, and do not hike alone at dawn or dusk. None of these places is dangerous by daylight with a local. The risk is being alone, on foot, at night, and visibly unfamiliar.
Last updated · Edward Leonard, maker of Clearpath Routes
Do not base yourself here
The Cape Flats townships: Nyanga, Philippi, Khayelitsha, Manenberg, Hanover Park, Delft and Mitchells Plain. Visit on a registered township tour or with a resident host, in daylight.
Do not walk here after dark
The CBD Foreshore, lower Long Street once bars thin out, Woodstock towards Salt River, and the underpasses around the station. Fine by day, empty at night.
Do not go alone
Lion's Head, Table Mountain trailheads, Signal Hill and Boyes Drive at dawn or dusk. Hiking muggings are the one crime that reliably targets visitors.
Do not stop here
Unlit shoulders of the N2 and M3 if your car breaks down at night. Keep driving to a lit petrol station and call from there.
Why these areas, and what the source is
These are not bad places or bad people. They are home to well over a million Capetonians, and the violent crime there has nothing to do with tourists. The South African Police Service publishes crime figures per police station each year and each quarter, and Cape Flats stations repeatedly appear among the highest in the country for murder. Check the current numbers for any station yourself at the SAPS crime statistics page. We do not quote figures we have not checked against that source.
One more thing: your GPS does not know any of this. Routing apps will send you through Nyanga to save four minutes on the way from the airport. Read the airport route guide before you land.
More on this from our other guides: safety basics on capetownsafe.com and going out after dark on capetownatnight.com. Looking for where to stay instead? See the nine area guides.
From the makers of this guide
Route around these areas, not through them
Knowing which suburb to book is half of it. The other half is the route between the airport, your accommodation and dinner. Clearpath Routes is a Cape Town navigation app that routes you around known risk areas, based on historical and reported incident data. Live alerts are part of Premium.
- Routes built on historical and reported incident data
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