Well our population is under rated for one thing, lots of shacks and illegal immigrants make stats hard here.
But mainly, most of our deaths are in the townships I would assume, im shure any stats will back that up, infact they do, I remember reading the Western Cape crime report for last year in the Argus a while ago, Kyalitcsha and Mitchells plain with the highest murders etc. So anyway, point being that walking through the suburbs in South Africa isnt nearly as much more dangerous as those stas make it out to be. I'd also believe that any stats you get for the UK will have gone up by a higher margn lately that SA's, with all of their own imigration and inner city degredation.
Just like what you say about Hillbrow, im shure walking through a dodgy area of London or any other big city is a few times more dangerous than walking through a quaint Southern Suburbs suburb of Cape Town. So exactly like you say, risk is a probabilty, and as most deaths are in townships or previously disadvataged areas (which we dont really walk through daily or even ever now do we) you are quite alot more safe in SA than stas tell you.
Except for hijacking, thats another problem, but murder assualt, baby rape etc..