{"id":654844,"date":"2026-06-19T14:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T12:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=654844"},"modified":"2026-06-19T14:26:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T12:26:51","slug":"only-44-of-police-stations-in-south-africa-answer-the-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/government\/654844-only-44-of-police-stations-in-south-africa-answer-the-phone.html","title":{"rendered":"Only 44% of police stations in South Africa answer the phone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A recent Democratic Alliance (DA) audit found that only 454 of South Africa’s 1,025 police stations answered their phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audit methodology involved the party calling South African Police Service (SAPS) stations across rural, urban, and metropolitan districts between 2 June and 12 June 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These stations were each called once at various times between 08:00 and 17:00 on weekdays to ascertain how reachable they were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the report, the party used Google’s artificial intelligence-based research tool NotebookLM to analyse the collected data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audit found that 56% of the stations could not be reached, while only 44% answered their phones. Many of the calls were dropped, engaged or simply just rang, the DA said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When stations did answer, they generally did so within 10 seconds. Only Gauteng and the Western Cape achieved a reachability greater than 50%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gauteng barely exceeded the threshold, with just three more stations that answered the phone than those that did not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a reachability of 75.2%, the Western Cape’s stations were significantly more likely to answer their phones than those in the other stations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The audit found key issues with reaching the police, with a high frequency of calls being dropped or engaged,” the DA said in its audit report<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The most shocking of these findings was in Limpopo, where out of the 87 numbers called, only 9 answered one of their contacts, while 78 did not answer at all.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DA said that it intended to submit the audit to the Minister of Police and the National Police Commissioner and would work with them to ensure action was taken based on the findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Every unanswered phone could be an emergency. Every other province failed to answer the majority of calls.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The table below summarises the findings from the DA’s audit of police station reachability via phone, carried out during June 2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Province<\/th>Stations called<\/th>Stations that did not answer<\/th>Stations that answered<\/th>Reachability percentage<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Limpopo<\/td>87<\/td>78<\/td>9<\/td>10.3%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Free State<\/td>110<\/td>76<\/td>34<\/td>30.9%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
KwaZulu-Natal<\/td>183<\/td>115<\/td>68<\/td>37.2%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Mpumalanga<\/td>86<\/td>52<\/td>34<\/td>39.5%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Eastern Cape<\/td>116<\/td>63<\/td>53<\/td>45.7%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Northern Cape<\/td>88<\/td>47<\/td>41<\/td>46.6%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
North West<\/td>85<\/td>45<\/td>40<\/td>47.1%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Gauteng<\/td>117<\/td>57<\/td>60<\/td>51.3%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Western Cape<\/td>153<\/td>38<\/td>115<\/td>75.2%<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Poor reachability in crime-riddled areas <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One major finding in the audit was that a significant number of national priority stations in areas that require urgent infrastructure and resources to combat severe crime rates did not answer their phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Western Cape, these included stations in Atlantis, Elsies River, Harare, Khayelitsha, Kleinvlei, Lentegeur and Nyanga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Gauteng stations in Hillbrow, Akasia, Ivory Park, Johannesburg Central, Kagiso and Moroka were also unreachable by phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In KwaZulu-Natal, stations in Phoenix, Umlazi, Plessislaer, Pinetown, Inanda and Chatsworth in KwaZulu-Natal did not answer the phone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The findings are consistent with issues identified during the DA\u2019s oversight visit to the 10111 Emergency Communication Centre,” the party said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Officials reported staff shortages, communication challenges, outdated technology and difficulties contacting police stations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Important 10111 upgrade botched<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In May, communications minister Solly Malatsi revealed that an administrative error led to the failure<\/a> to extend the validity of a long-running tender bidding process for a key 10111 integrated management system.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State IT Agency (SITA) previously noted that SAPS lacked a single, integrated system to manage the registration of reported incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The management of reported incidents is performed by different systems on various technology platforms,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SITA also indicated that the technology on certain reporting systems was outdated and no longer supported by the development platform provided by its supplier, Cisco Systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant that the system required an upgrade to enable the police to perform their duties effectively in managing, registering and dispatching incidents reported through 10111.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the tender bid for the 10111 upgrades lapsing, Malatsi said the 10111 platform was operational nationwide and posed no operational risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“SITA continues to proactively support and effectively maintain the national 10111 telephony system,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The department will continue to follow developments, and if any acts of wrongdoing are found, the DCDT will ensure the appropriate consequence management will be applied.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent audit by the DA found that only 454 of South Africa’s 1,025 police stations answered their phones when called, with Limpopo province seeing only 10% of calls answered. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":653706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18668],"tags":[32306,80525,9695,8999,8693,935,82997,2446,76862,17084,18068],"class_list":["post-654844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-32306","tag-cisco-systems","tag-crime","tag-da","tag-democratic-alliance","tag-police","tag-police-stations","tag-saps","tag-solly-malatsi","tag-south-african-police-service","tag-state-information-technology-agency-sita"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654844"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654918,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654844\/revisions\/654918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}