Johannesburg - Some 40,000 cases of rape were brought before South Africa's courts in the past year - but only a tenth of that number ended in convictions, the country's Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said Thursday.

A total of 39,946 new rape cases were added to the rolls of magistrates' courts in all nine provinces between July 1, 2008 and the end of June this year. During the same period, 4,244 rape cases ended with convictions, Radebe told parliament.

Radebe said a breakdown of the cases by age showed the majority of rape suspects were aged between 21 and 30.

KwaZulu-Natal province, the second-most populous province where the port city of Durban is located, accounted for nearly one-fifth of all the rape cases, followed by Western Cape, where Cape Town is situated.

It is not clear how many cases of rape were actually reported to police over that period.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of rape in the world. The latest crime statistics showed 71,500 sexual offences were reported to police between March 2008 and March 2009, a 12 per cent increase on the previous year. The government said that increase could be partly attributed to the inclusion of attacks on men.

The last police rape statistics, which date from 2008, showed 132 cases of rape were reported per day countrywide - a figure activists believe to be a fraction of the real number of rapes.

South African President Jacob Zuma has taken a tough line on violent crime since being inaugurated in May. Zuma's new police commissioner Bheki Cele has vowed to crack down on robbers, but has not proposed any specific measures around gender violence. dpa