111 police convicted of serious crimes while IPID drowns in 14 000 cases

South Africans who lay a complaint against a police officer are joining a queue that already runs past 14 000 open cases, and the directorate that has to work through them has fewer than 200 investigators to do it.

That is the load the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) carried into its latest reporting to Parliament, delivered on Thursday, 15 October. In the 2025/26 financial year the directorate registered 5 259 new cases against police officers. Of those, 3 468 involved allegations of assault and torture, and 669 concerned the discharge of official firearms.

IPID investigates criminal allegations against police members, including deaths in custody, rape, assault and torture. Its figures for the year show 111 SAPS members convicted of crimes, among them 28 convictions in cases involving deaths resulting from police action and 10 rape convictions.

Convictions in cases involving deaths from police action rose from 22 in the previous reporting period to 28, and IPID recorded 464 new cases of that kind during the year.

On rape, the directorate recorded 116 new allegations against police officers, up from 95 the year before. Of the 116, 72 allegedly involved officers on duty and 44 off duty. One officer, stationed at Matlelerekeng Police Station in Limpopo, received a 10-year prison sentence for rape and an additional two years for child pornography offences.

For anyone who has laid a charge against a member of SAPS, the practical question is not the conviction rate. It is whether the case is worked at all. MPs put that question to IPID in the numbers, and then put a harder one to SAPS.

Dianne Kohler, an MP for the DA, challenged police recruitment and vetting. “What is your theory on how these rapists, fraudsters, torturers, thieves, and even murderers get into the SAPS in the first place?” she asked.

It is the question that sits under every figure in the report. A conviction is the end of a case. The beginning of one is a person who should not have been handed a uniform, a firearm and the authority to arrest.

IPID’s own annual reporting recorded 84 criminal convictions secured through its investigations, compared with 43 the previous year, along with 281 arrests and 994 cases before the courts at the end of March 2026. The 84 convictions in IPID’s official reporting and the 111 SAPS members cited in reporting on the figures represent different measures, and the two numbers should not be read as one count.

Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police adopted its Budgetary Review and Recommendation Reports on SAPS, IPID and other policing bodies on Wednesday, and on Thursday raised concerns about criminal investigations, forensic services and financial management. MPs warned that continued failures in policing and accountability threatened public safety and called for corrective measures in the criminal justice system.

As The South African reported on 15 October, the figures were revealed during IPID’s latest reporting to Parliament. The directorate now has to work its mounting caseload while investigating fresh allegations against the officers it is meant to police.

What South Africans are living with is a system where the complaint is easy to open and slow to close. A woman who reports an officer for rape joins a list of 116 new allegations for the year. A family that loses someone to police action joins 464 new cases, and 28 convictions are what came out the other end.

The demand from the public is not complicated. It is that the person behind the badge is vetted before the badge is issued, that a complaint against an officer is investigated with the same seriousness as a complaint against a civilian, and that the case is finished inside a human lifetime. IPID’s own capacity figures say the state cannot currently promise any of that.

The Enquirer will keep reporting on IPID’s caseload, on SAPS recruitment and vetting, and on what the Portfolio Committee on Police does with the recommendations it has now adopted.