In 1998, three out of ten women surveyed in the Southern Metropolitan region of Johannesburg reported that they had been victims of sexual violence in the previous year. Sixty-eight percent of women said they had been subjected to some form of sexual harassment at work or school at some point in their lives. One in four young men questioned reported having had sex with a woman without her consent by the time he had reached eighteen. According to the most recently available South African Police Service statistics, there were 51,249 cases of rape reported to police nationally in 1999. According to the South African police, rape continues to be one of the most under-reported crimes, and therefore unpunished.
Rape ranks last on the list of South African crimes in terms of conviction rates.
A considerable percentage of cases are withdrawn before they reach court or during court proceedings. There is a significant backlog of cases in the justice system with some rape cases taking as long as two years to be finalized. Trials for child victims regularly take longer than trials with adult victims and witnesses. The prevalence of rape and violence against women in South Africa remains highly contested. South African women's rights groups counter that the magnitude of the problem cannot be reflected solely in statistics and warn against creating a debate centered around the accuracy of numbers.