

The choice of regions feels cherry-picked to inflate the blue area on the map. Why else would they include Mongolia, or include only the least-dense regions of the US and Russia while excluding the major population centers?
While South Africa certainly has a lot of murders, both absolute and per capita, this map could easily be draw with a lot less blue on it.
For example, using absolute numbers from Wikipedia…
South Africa: 27,272
Haiti + Philippines + Ecuador: 28,509
That map would look very different.
You’re right that using absolute numbers in the first place is bad practice.