In South Africa, violent crime is soaring, with the murder rate now at a 20-year high. Since 2012, murders have jumped up by 77%. The last annual figures show that, shockingly, over 12 months, more than 27,000 people were killed. For comparison, in the UK, that total was just 696. But the number of murders solved has fallen to just 12%. Many of us living in fear work in the security sector with audacious heists of security vans commonplace. Daniel De Simoni reports now from Johannesburg.

A normal day in a security van carrying cash in South Africa. What happens next looks extraordinary. But it's a constant criminal threat. This is a cash-in-transit robbery. Vans rammed off busy roads. Guards terrorized. Boms used to access cash. Cit hijackings are one of the violent crimes at crisis levels here. This guard survived a robbery. Some don't.

As a human being, I'm scared. But I'm going out. I might not come back, but it's life for everyone in CIT.

From here, they dispatch the helicopters, the backup teams, everything.

His boss says more more helps needed from government.

Well, it's like a terrorist group. It's been very military-organized, well-executed. If you see the way that they plan these robberies, it's very difficult for our teams to stop that.

Although most South Africans can't afford to pay for them, private security officers now outnumber their police counterparts. In the air, each day, crisscrossing cities, guarding security vans down below, waiting to respond to hijackings. On the ground, patrolling the streets. We're with an armed intervention team in Johannesburg, and they just heard a vehicle has been hijacked. They're following a digital tracker in the vehicle, spotting men running from the car's possible location.

Stop them. Stop them. Stop. Down, down, down. Where's the car? Where's the car?

But they weren't the robbers. The chase was back on. Moments later, the vehicle's found.

It's a game of cat and mouse. They normally dump the vehicle in what they call it as a cool off period to see if anyone does respond. But I think now it was literally seconds that we must have got.

They call the police to fetch the car. Thousands of new officers are being recruited. It's election year, the most since the African National Congress came to power in 1994 at the end of Apartheid.

I've always wanted to join the police. It's more about serving the country than anything else and just being able to help people in need. I can't wait to go out there to serve the community to uphold the law and fight crime.

Murders are at a two-decade high, with over 27,000 people killed in a year and only 12% solved.

Our murder rate is not pleasing at all. Our sexual attack is not pleasing at all, car hijack, and all that. As the police, we think we are getting on top of things. There are things that have happened, maybe, that have put us on the little bit off a big foot.

But in South Africa's state of insecurity, the wave of violence will not be quickly turned back. Daniel back. Daniel Disimoni, BBC News, Johannesburg.