Theolin Tembo | Published 1 hour ago
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has said that legal action is not off the table to compel the South African Police Services (SAPS) to deliver on its policing mandate, after they revealed that 56% of police stations do not answer their phones.
This emerged after the DA members of Parliament held a briefing to highlight their findings on calling for an audit assessing the accessibility and responsiveness of police stations. The DA has called this a “national crisis” and said that this is “not a small failure” by the police.
Deputy spokesperson on Police, Ian Cameron, said their nationwide audit of 1,025 police stations found that more than half could not be reached by telephone. The audit was conducted across all nine provinces using officially listed contact numbers.
“A total of 571 stations did not answer, while 454 answered one or both listed numbers. This means that 56% of police stations could not be reached, while only 44% answered.
“Limpopo recorded the lowest reachability rate, with 78 out of 87 stations failing to answer. Free State recorded the second-lowest rate. The audit also found that several high-crime priority stations across the country could not be reached,” Cameron said.
“The findings are consistent with issues identified during the DA’s oversight visit to the 10111 Emergency Communication Centre, where officials reported staff shortages, communication challenges, outdated technology and difficulties contacting police stations.”
The DA said it will submit the findings of this audit to the Minister of Police, Firoz Cachalia, and the National Commissioner, Lt-General Puleng Dimpane, and call for corrective action to improve public access to police stations.
DA chief whip, Glynnis Breytenbach, said their constituency work becomes much more difficult when there is an unresponsive police service.
Breytenbach said she and her fellow MPs get daily complaints from people throughout the country, about a crime that has taken place in which the people are the victims of, only for them to receive no response when phoning a police station, and “even if they get through, there's still no response”.
“It makes it extremely frustrating to try to deal with a criminal justice system, and that very first basic step fails. It's impossible for an investigation to take place when the police are not responsive to the first phone call.
“It's impossible for the prosecuting authority to do its job if the police are not answering the telephone. It just makes the whole system become dysfunctional, and we see the result thereof,” Breytenbach said.
Cameron has highlighted that since Dimpane has taken office, the rate of response has tripled.
“We started raising the alarm with General (Thembisile) Patekile, the retiring provincial commissioner in the Western Cape . Back at the end of 2024, about police members who are involved in the taxi industry, he never responded.
“In fact, he even denied it at some stage. We started again at the end of 2025, but we were ignored. In 2026, we raised the alarm about it again, and as soon as Dimpane came in, we started seeing resignations, criminal charges, and suspensions of members who are involved in the taxi industry ,” Cameron said.
“In terms of police vehicles, at the moment, when we're not seeing a major improvement, there is a huge bottleneck. They don't have enough artisans who need to work at the different depots or garages. They don't have skills, and they also don't have the vehicles and the machinery that they need to do modern work with.”
Cameron said that they have also heard the frustration from the police members themselves.
“You see the South African National Defence Forces (SANDF) being deployed, but the SAPS Tactical Response Team in Cape Town don't even have an email address. Why are we pulling in the SANDF when the police aren't using their own structures properly?”
Speaking on the sidelines, Cameron said that legal action is not off the table, especially amid the issues of police vehicles, rape kits shortages , and the latest issue being phone call responsiveness.
“It is definitely a discussion, and it's one that is actually becoming more and more prominent within the DA itself. It is something that's on the table. It has become extremely frustrating that, from the City of Cape Town and Western Cape Government’s point of view to keep on offering help, but it's not used.”
Cameron highlighted that about a couple of years ago, there was an issue with police radios that didn't work, with the Western Cape SAPS radios being years behind the rest of the provinces, “and despite that, they still didn't accept help from the City and province”.
“They ended up procuring a temporary solution. Not a bad solution, but a temporary solution nonetheless, and they still haven't fixed the long-term issue. The old infrastructure still hasn't been properly removed, and the new infrastructure is a temporary solution. To me, it shouldn't be one…
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