The Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, revealed in a reply to a Democratic Alliance (DA) Parliamentary Question that 90% of South African Police stations in four out of the nine provinces, do not meet the United Nations (UN) recommended police to citizen ratio of 1:220.
This follows the DA’s revelation yesterday, that only 16.1% of all South African police stations meet this recommended global standard – which the Minister and the National Police Commissioner have both reiterated on numerous occasions.
The worst performing provinces are Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, with each province being extremely under-capacitated. The table below demonstrates the severity of the shortages by province:
| Province | Total stations | Stations with 1:220 | Percentage |
| Eastern Cape | 197 | 41 | 20.8 |
| Free State | 109 | 29 | 26.6 |
| Gauteng | 142 | 7 | 4.9 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 184 | 14 | 3.8 |
| Limpopo | 103 | 18 | 17.4 |
| Mpumalanga | 90 | 10 | 11.1 |
| North West | 83 | 7 | 8.4 |
| Northern Cape | 91 | 49 | 53.8 |
| Western Cape | 151 | 11 | 7.2 |
| National Total | 1150 | 186 | 16.1 |
This table indicates the severity of under-staffing at SAPS stations. Our police face daily uphill battles when they are expected to provide an efficient service, in the face of such extreme staff shortages. It is very hard for our men and women in blue to do their jobs when there simply are not enough officers to protect the people they are meant to.
The DA has called on the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, to urgently prioritise the recruitment of police reservists to ensure that we have more boots on the ground to improve police visibility in all communities.
The DA will now call on the Minister to immediately address these shortages, with a priority focus on provinces where over 90% of SAPS stations are under-staffed and under-capacitated. The Minister should start by cutting the VIP protection budget and reallocate this funding to the front line of policing.
If we can adequately resource our SAPS stations with the personnel they need, we can increase visible policing, while also increasing our investigative and intelligence operations. This will in no doubt lead to faster and increased conviction rates, with dangerous criminals behind bars instead of on the streets.
The first step to lowering our violent crime statistics is to empower our SAPS officers in blue with the personnel they need to do their job as effectively and as safely as is possible.