South Africa's Police Minister Firoz Cachalia has said that the security forces are not yet able to defeat deadly criminal gangs, in a stark admission that underscores the scale of the country's crime crisis.

Gang violence, alongside robberies, accounts for many murders in South Africa, which has one of the world's highest homicide rates.

Cachalia said gang violence had become increasingly complex, especially in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces, requiring new strategies beyond traditional policing.

"I do not believe that we are currently in a position to defeat these gangs," the minister told journalists on Wednesday.

South Africa, the continent's most industrialised nation, has long struggled with entrenched organised crime.

Many people in South Africa own licensed firearms for personal protection, but there are many more illegal guns in circulation.

Police data shows that an average of 63 people were killed each day between April and September last year.

Speaking after his visit to crime-infested Nelson Mandela Bay in Eastern Cape, Cachalia said criminal gangs were on a "killing spree" in the two provinces.

"We had a discussion about the problem of organised crime in the Eastern Cape, including extortion rackets, gang violence and related issues," said the minister.

"I indicated that this is a grave problem throughout the country, that these cartels wield significant wealth and power, and that this is deeply concerning," he added.

Despite the creation of an anti-gang unit in 2019, Cachalia said gangsters seemed to be winning the war.

"Establishing gang units from time to time is an ad hoc response to a growing problem. I really don't think that we should be approaching this matter in a point-scoring way."

He said South African police were doing their best to fight the violence "but the problem is a growing one. That is my view".

His visit comes months after Nelson Mandela Bay was hit by a wave of killings.

A deadly spike in violence hit the area in the latter half of last year, leaving 118 people dead between August and December, a local prevention group said.

The violence has continued into the new year, with around 40 people killed across the region in January, local media reported.

There are about three million legally held firearms in South Africa, but there are at least the same number of unlicensed weapons in circulation in the country, which has a population of 63 million, according to statistics cited by Gideon Joubert from the South African Gunowners' Association.

Last month, 11 people were killed in a mass shooting linked to illegal mining turf wars near Johannesburg.

The shooting occurred just two weeks after another attack at the Saulsville Hostel in the capital Pretoria, where 11 people, including a three-year-old child, were killed.

In another incident last May, gunmen killed eight customers at a tavern in the south-eastern city of Durban.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised stronger law enforcement action and increased police deployment to tackle the gang violence in the country.