By Thapelo Molefe
South Africa’s police have been told in no uncertain terms that there will be no new money to fight crime, and they must urgently become more efficient using existing or even fewer resources.
This was the clearest message on the second day of the National Policing Summit on Wednesday, where government leaders, senior SA Police Service officials and civil society gathered to scrutinise the slow progress of the Integrated Crime and Violence Prevention Strategy (ICVPS).
The summit, themed “Efficiency in Action: Optimising South Africa’s Policing Potential”, began its plenary session with a stark policy briefing by Bilkis Omar from the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service.
She warned that the country’s crime crisis was deeply rooted in systemic social and economic dysfunctions, and that SAPS could not shoulder the responsibility alone.
“The overall subtext of this summit requires that the police must become more efficient,” Omar said.
“We’ve been told by National Treasury there’s no new money. SAPS must do more and do better with the resources they have—even if that means reprioritising their work.”
The ICVPS was introduced as a national implementation framework, aiming to coordinate all levels of government around a unified crime prevention strategy. Its six pillars include early intervention, victim support, safer urban environments and community participation.
Despite progress in policy development and intergovernmental agreements with six metros, Omar admitted that “the impact has not yet been fully felt in our communities”.
She stressed that implementation remained in its early stages and many departments were still coming on board.
A key innovation was the use of the District Development Model (DDM) to link municipal planning to crime prevention efforts. Technical work streams and provincial steering committees were being established, but execution gaps remain.
“We are giving quarterly progress reports to Forum of South African Directors-General (FOSAD),” Omar said.
“We have the right policies, but the underlying issues of poor service delivery, weakened family structures and lack of social cohesion are undermining progress”.
The panel discussion that followed the presentation revealed widespread concern among senior police officials about the practical challenges in implementing the strategy.
Deputy National Commissioner for Crime Detection, Shadrack Sibiya, pushed back against the idea that prevention alone could reduce crime.
“This kind of thinking actually draws the country backward,” he said.
“Communities are not complaining about crime prevention—they are complaining about poor investigations. We need more skilled detectives, more technology and better systems to investigate complex crimes like kidnapping and cash-in-transit heists”.
Sibiya also highlighted a dangerous perception gap between SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), warning that poor integration was jeopardising the country’s fight against organised crime.
“There’s too much finger-pointing,” he said.
“Crime is a social phenomenon that requires collaboration from arrest to rehabilitation. We need the NPA, Correctional Services, Social Development—all of them. Vision 2030 gives us the roadmap, but we are still far from realising it.”
The sustainability of SAPS operations like Operation Shanela also came under fire. Omar criticised the practice of roadblocks, calling them “too costly” and ineffective in the long term.
She argued that while visible policing is popular with communities, it should be targeted, evidence-based, and not merely for show.
Deputy National Commissioner for Policing, Tebello Mosikili, defended Operation Shanela.
“It is not about being reactive—it’s about going where crime matters most. The operations are intelligence-led,” she said.
She explained that SAPS was moving toward more collaborative district-based approaches, where metro police, municipal structures and community forums jointly deployed resources.
However, Mosikili acknowledged capacity constraints.
“It will never be enough,” she said. “But putting all our law enforcement and community capacity together through the District Development Model is the only way we can begin to respond effectively.”
Gauteng Community Policing Forum chairperson Thokozani Masilela added that community-police partnerships were being undermined by bureaucracy and a lack of direct support.
He praised the R70 million allocated to CPF resourcing, but said National Treasury and SAPS financial rules were making it impossible to spend effectively.
“All the community needs is data and airtime,” he said.
“You can’t say you’re building e-policing, but CPF members can’t even attend online meetings because they don’t have data.”
Masilela also raised alarm about the safety of community patrollers, many of whom operated in high-risk environments without adequate protection or insurance.
“Some are pure vigilantes, formed out of frustration,” he warned. “This is what happens when the justice system is seen as ineffective.”
There was consensus across the panel that the success of the ICVPS not hinged on the police, but on political will and proper coordination across all spheres of government.
“The NCPS failed because other departments didn’t take ownership,” Omar said.
“Now we have FOSAD and the cluster system, which gives us hope. But if departments continue to see safety as SAPS’s problem alone, we will end up repeating the same mistakes”.
Sibiya concluded with a stark warning: “We are facing syndicates that operate like global businesses—high profit, low risk. Without a capable, well-equipped state, we won’t win this battle.”
As the summit continues, the gap between policy ambition and operational reality remains wide.
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