People are breaking public CCTV cameras in South Africa with one region hit badly
Concerns are mounting over increasing incidents of vandalism, theft, and damage to CCTV cameras installed by the local government in Gauteng as part of its e-policing programme.
Gauteng’s West Rand region, including Mogale and Merafong, suffered the most incidents of vandalised, stolen or damaged CCTV camera systems in the province.
This is according to the Gauteng Department of e-Government, which is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the province’s CCTV cameras.
In an appeal issued on Thursday, Gauteng MEC for e-Government, Bonginkosi Dhlamini, asked residents of the province to aid the government in protecting public tech assets.
“The Gauteng Provincial Government has invested heavily in public infrastructure to improve public safety and service delivery across the province,” he said.
“When public assets such as CCTV cameras are vandalised or stolen, it not only undermines our efforts to create safer environments for residents but also diverts valuable resources.”
According to a presentation shared by e-Government, a total of 269 individual CCTV cameras were offline across the province by the beginning of April 2026.
While it did not reveal how many individual cameras were offline due to vandalism, it did indicate that 36 CCTV sites had been vandalised.
Of the 89 sites offline across Gauteng, over 40% had been vandalised. The rest suffered from water-damaged batteries and faulty inverters.
Per the department, Gauteng has 960 individual CCTV cameras running across the province, transmitting data to authorities via the department’s command centre.
Gauteng’s Southern Corridor, which includes Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark, and Meyerton, was the second-most affected by CCTV vandalism.
The least affected was the Eastern Corridor, which included the City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Area, Germiston, Benoni, Boksburg and Brakpan.
Dhlamini said that the destruction of public infrastructure in Gauteng undermines government efforts to build safer communities and wastes resources.
“We therefore call on residents, community organisations, businesses and all stakeholders to work with government in protecting these assets,” he said.
He encouraged residents to report incidents of vandalism and theft and other suspicious activity in and around government infrastructure to the South African Police Service (SAPS).
R124 million invested in Gauteng’s CCTV network
Gauteng has invested over R124 million in the province’s public CCTV security system since the programme’s inception.
A portion of that amount was maintenance costs, which have exceeded R5.1 million, and operating expenses. It costs Gauteng between R12 million and R15 million annually to keep the cameras running.
Dhlamini said in May that the overwhelming majority of CCTV cameras in the province are still operational and that maintenance teams were actively attending to non-functioning sites.
The department explained that the sophisticated nature of the surveillance and security networks required ongoing maintenance, software support and equipment replacement.
“Additional interventions are being implemented to improve infrastructure protection, battery durability and system reliability,” the department said at the time.
In his 2026 state of the city address that same month, Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero indicated that the city used the provincial CCTV camera system.
Morero highlighted CCTV safety systems to showcase Johannesburg’s growing digitisation and said the city would be transformed into a smart city by 2027.
He said that the Johannesburg smart city programme would be funded by R5.4 billion in investments, a portion of the larger R73 billion investments it received for infrastructure improvements.
Morero said Microsoft was a major investor in the city. He also said that Johannesburg had received R27 billion in foreign direct investment.
Morero said that artificial intelligence must be used to improve Johannesburg’s service delivery, although he did not detail how the technology would be integrated into the metro’s systems.
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