Nicholas Woode-Smith, writing for the FMF, said the SAPS has been undermined since 1996 when the ANC centralised police control, removing local autonomy and instituting racial quotas that disrupted experienced ranks and promoted political appointees. This resulted in weakened investigative capacity, widespread corruption, and demotivated officers.

Woode-Smith highlighted South Africa’s ongoing crime issues, including a murder rate comparable to the death toll in warzones, with 85 murders a day. The first quarter of 2024/2025 saw more than 6 000 murders, over 11 500 sexual offences, and over 9 000 rapes.

The SAPS suffers from a chronic manpower shortage, Woode-Smith said. Only 179 000 police officers (as of 2023) must protect over 63 million South Africans, stretched over 1.22 million square kilometres. While 2.84 police officers per a 1 000 people is not necessarily inadequate, “SAPS has proven to be woefully undertrained, underequipped and unmotivated.”

The manpower shortage becomes even more pronounced when it comes to detectives, the FMF added. As of 2024, there were only 22 413 detectives, with vacancies for 8 594 detective positions. SAPS lost over 8 000 detectives between 2017 and 2023.

“Visible policing is meant to be a preventative measure to dissuade opportunistic criminals. But police cannot be everywhere at once. There is no level of resources that would allow the police to visibly police every community adequately. And distracting them with such a task does not prevent criminals, it distracts police from responding to crimes in progress or investigating committed crimes,” Woode-Smith argued.

“Solving crimes is one of the fundamental ways to discourage criminality. When criminals fear that they will get caught, they are truly disincentivised from committing a crime. Visible policing, on the other hand, only serves to delay a criminal for so long as the police are in the area. As soon as they leave, there is no more impediment to commit the crime.

“The police need to end this foolish notion of visible policing and focus all its resources on rebuilding its investigative capacity. The role of SAPS should not be petty patrols, but to respond to crimes, gather evidence, investigate, and put criminals behind bars,” Woode-Smith stated.

That doesn’t mean visible policing doesn’t have a place at all, he added, stating that it is just a strategy that doesn’t work for the police in its current form. But visible policing does work in parts of South Africa – just not when it is SAPS doing it.

There are over 580 000 private security personnel in South Africa, with 2.5 million registered security guards in reserve, Woode-Smith pointed out. That is 9.21 active personnel per a thousand people, and 48.89 reservists. Private security has taken over the role of visible policing across South Africa. Neighbourhoods are plastered with security company signs; booths are setup for guards to monitor the roads.

“And with their incentive to perform well, private security has an average response time of 5 – 15 minutes. I’ve personally had private security reach my home within less than two minutes. The police’s average response time ranges from 15 minutes to over an hour,” Woode-Smith said.

Private security has the incentive to perform its job well. Private security personnel are often more enthusiastic, better trained and more competent than their police counterparts. And with the decentralisation of these companies, they are can spread themselves out over a far wider area than SAPS ever could, he believes.

“Private security is often founded in the areas they patrol, amongst its members. They cultivate great relationships with communities. And even though there is a profit motive, it seems to always be private security helping vagrants or responding to crimes that don’t involve a paying client. The only limitation of private security is that they are only present in more affluent areas where enough residents can afford their services. But this can easily be solved.

“Shift the budget that would be going into ineffective, mass policing and hold transparent tendering processes, where local areas can elect private security to perform patrols rather than the police. Outsourcing this function to companies that have proven to excel at it would free up the police to focus on more effective strategies to combat lawlessness.

“Cops shouldn’t be glorified neighbour watch. They are meant to be the ultimate sword that holds criminals accountable and delivers justice. But as it stands, they are little better than complacent patrollers and bureaucrats. But by privatising visible policing, we can free up our men and women in blue to truly combat the criminal scourge that terrorises all South Africans,” Woode-Smith concluded.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is a political analyst and author. He is the managing editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation.

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The violent crime crisis in South Africa is well-documented. It is common to hear people from outside South Africa express astonishment at how we manage to survive in a country with violence levels comparable to active war zones. South Africans have grown accustomed to this reality, while their political leaders only pay lip service to the fight against crime.

We must first determine what type of crime we are addressing. In the simplest definition, a crime is anything deemed unlawful by a statute of a particular jurisdiction. For example, if a law prohibits smoking in a private residence used as a home office; smoking in that space would constitute a crime/offence.

A more robust definition of crime stems from natural law and justice, stating that any action that harms or infringes upon another’s rights is a crime. This definition includes offenses like murder and rape, which do not rely on statutes for recognition as crimes.

It is crucial for citizens to understand this distinction. When politicians claim to be combating crime, which crimes are they targeting? Are they allocating resources to apprehend individuals lacking proper permits or signage for their businesses, or are they focusing on murderers, rapists, and thieves?

Due to non-harmful crimes being included in the statute book, resources are spent on prosecuting individuals whose actions are not harmful but are considered criminal for various reasons. This includes arresting and prosecuting individuals for drug possession and/or drug use and even its commercial activity. No matter how reprehensible you may find it when another person consumes drugs, someone else taking them does not harm you in any way. The action of consuming drugs is not harmful to anyone but the drug user themselves.

Given South Africa’s high rates of violent crime, this focus on non-harmful crimes is troubling. It is imperative to concentrate all criminal justice resources on actions that harm others, such as violent crimes, rather than procedural offenses that do not harm anyone.

This means focusing more on the rape and violent assault epidemic, coupled with a murder rate that would make many across the world afraid to venture outside in South Africa at all, and such rampant theft through crimes like housebreakings.

The most effective approach would be for the legislature to consider repealing many of these laws that criminalize actions without causing harm to others. This would streamline the criminal justice system, allowing it to focus solely on crimes that harm individuals.

As citizens, we must consider what matters most to us. Is it more important to arrest an entrepreneur lacking proper documentation, or should our state’s primary focus be eliminating violent crime in our society? Prosecuting non-harmful actions instead of harmful ones will not create a safer or more prosperous society.

The excessive allocation of resources to non-harmful crimes amidst a severe crisis is why the Free Market Foundation’s Section 12 project suggests decriminalisation as a solution to South Africa’s crime problem. Other solutions to dealing with violent crime include a sounder definition of crimes in South Africa, decentralisation of policing powers as it has been shown to improve accountability, and the ability to respond to local context-specific offenses. Developing the capacity of the criminal justice system by increasing funding to enable it to deal with the mammoth task that is our violent crime problem is also part of the solution.

According to the South African Police Service itself at the Khayelitsha Commission, it does not have enough human resources to service the South African populace. Therefore, the most rational thing to do would be to lessen the avenues under which they will be expending their already limited resources. One can only hope that sense will prevail with the current decision-makers, and they will take seriously our violent crime crisis.

Thus, when the next politician you listen to says they promise to fight crime or they are, ask them which crime? Lest you think the state is protecting you whilst it is criminalizing those who harm no one and by virtue of that, letting those who do harm others, walk free.

The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of ProtectionWeb.

Written by Zakhele Mthembu BA Law LLB (Wits), Policy Officer at the Free Market Foundation.

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