- On Monday, a 67-year-old German tourist was shot dead in an attempted hijacking near the Kruger National Park.
- He was driving on Numbi Road near White River en route to the park's Numbi Gate, when armed men attacked them.
- Police Minister Bheki Cele told journalists on Friday that three men who had been taken in for questioning, have been released.
On Monday, a 67-year-old German tourist was shot dead in an attempted hijacking near the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga.
He was travelling with his wife and two other German tourists.
The fatal shooting has highlighted South Africa's high levels of violent crime and concerns about the impact on the country's tourism industry.
This week on The Story, we speak to multimedia journalist Yeshiel Panchia who has been covering the story, and Dr Guy Lamb, a criminologist in the political science department at Stellenbosch University.
Panchia spent the week in the area where the attempted hijacking happened and said it's a crime hotspot.
He said locals had been victims of violent crime, including a "14-year-old boy who had been shot in the head in an attempted hijacking at the exact same spot as this tourist on 3 March".
Panchia said the victim and his wife had been to South Africa and loved the country. He said the family was upset that "some of the German media and some publications in South Africa took the liberty of naming the victim before their family members were notified".
The victim's wife and the other two German tourists returned to Germany two days after the incident.
Dr Guy Lamb, a criminologist in the political science department at Stellenbosch University, said attacks on tourists in South Africa have "happened from time to time".
"Typically tourists are the target of opportunistic crime such as street robberies, pickpocketers, sometimes being scammed, but largely tourists from wealthy countries that stay in luxurious hotels or lodges often aren't the targets of violent crime."
He said violent attacks on tourists tend to make international headlines, like the murder of a Ukrainian tourist who was stabbed to death while hiking in Cape Town in 2019. That case yielded a lot of international attention.
Still, in this particular case, there has been less international attention "because you've got Russia's war in Ukraine, the economic downturn, the effects of Covid, the cost of living increase, so lots of stories compete for the headline".
Lamb believes police need to increase the number of informants in communities, "so that the information and intelligence can be fed to them, and they can then infiltrate and arrest perpetrators".
"This is organised criminality, so it's easier to predict if you have good information."