You are most likely to be beaten to death if you live in the Eastern Cape than in any other province, Statistics SA's mortality and causes of death for 2016 released yesterday has revealed.

With at least 1699 deaths attributed to assault, Eastern Cape emerged as the most
violent province of all, followed by Western Cape at 1555 deaths due to assault and KwaZulu-Natal in third place with 1404 fatal assaults.

Mpumalanga is the province with the least recorded number of deaths due to assault at 199 cases, followed by the Northern Cape with 262 fatal cases of
assaults and Limpopo at 338 cases.

Suicide is more prevalent in KZN with 204 cases, followed by Northern Cape with 84 cases and Free State with 29 cases.

North West recorded the least cases of suicides with six cases, followed by Gauteng with 14 suicides and Limpopo with 16 cases.

Road accidents claimed more people in KZN than anywhere else with 1336 deaths, followed by Limpopo at 1335 fatalities and the Eastern Cape with 882 road accident deaths.

You are less likely to die in a car accident if you are in Gauteng, with 265 fatalities in 2016, followed by the Northern Cape with 461 road deaths and the Western Cape with 481 road fatalities.

In total, there were 456 612 deaths registered in 2016, 405370 (88.8%) of which were due to natural causes while 51 242 (11.2 %) were due to unnatural causes.

Males accounted for 52.2% of the total recorded deaths while their female counterparts accounted for 47.3% of the deaths.

Tuberculosis, which has maintained its place as the leading cause of death, killed more people in the Free State than anywhere else in the country. The province with the second most deaths as a result of TB is the Eastern Cape with 52010 cases,
followed by the Northern Cape with 4 701 TB deaths.

Free State also leads the pack with the highest number of HIV-related deaths at 5298 cases, followed by the Eastern Cape with 3793 HIV-related deaths and the Northern Cape in third place with 2 998 deaths due to HIV.

Free State again tops the list with the highest number of people killed by diabetes at 5579, with Northern Cape coming in second place with 4 047 diabetes-related deaths and Limpopo coming in at the third place with 3711 diabetes deaths.