THULANI NGWENYA | Police budget not enough for the under-resourcedsector to fight crime

The 2024 budget speech’s emphasis on law enforcement was insufficient against the backdrop of soaring crime levels and years of neglect in terms of budgetary allocations to our country ’s criminal justice cluster (CJC).

It is an unfortunate fact that crime remains persistently high, with criminals growing increasingly sophisticated ,while our police services, courts, prisons, traffic safety and border management continue to fall behind.

Somewhat positively, the budget allocated to the peace and security function was raised to R244bn for the2024/2025 financial year, up from the R236.8bn allocated for 2023/2024.

However, Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) has serious reservations on whether this funding is sufficient to address each sector within the CJC.

While the police services budget has been raised by 11.5% from R112.1bn last year to R125bn this year, this is little more than a drop in the ocean. The SAPS has been critically underfunded for years, and requires a far larger sum to adequately address the severe gap in resource and capacity provisions than the additional R12.9bn received.

Moreover, the 10,000 new police recruits to be trained this year mentioned by finance minister Enoch Godongwana becomes a decidedly less impressive number when one considers that the SAPS is losing about 6,000 police officers each year through attrition and that a large portion of officers will remain office bound. The result is a growing shortage of boots on the ground preventing crime.

The budget allocation towards our courts and prisons is also an issue. There is severe pressure on our court systems and a dire state of overcrowding at our prisons. The R3bn increase in funding towards both these areas is simply not enough to ensure that crimes are prosecuted effectively or to successfully house and rehabilitate prisoners.

It is also important to realise that our prisons are extremely dilapidated and understaffed. Although no mention was made as to how much of the combined R54.4bn in funding for law courts and correctional service facilities will go towards repairing prisons and hiring new prison staff. 

The country’s CJC sectors are all grouped together under “peace and security”, meaning that police services, courts, prisons, defence and state security agencies, home affairs, border management and traffic safety must all draw from the budgeted R24 4bn.

While the former four sectors are specifically allocated funds under the National Budget, the Border Management Agency and traffic police have been overlooked. As such, we urgently need clarity and details on how peace and security funding will be divided among the sectors and how border management and traffic safety will be affected.

As it stands, our country’s infamously porous borders are painfully understaffed and underequipped, giving them little power to control the flow of people and goods across our land and sea borders.

Likewise, without the necessary resources for traffic police, the carnage on our country’s roads will continue. This another reason that Pocru has called on the government to nationalise our traffic police, rather than leaving them segmented under various other provincial departments.

But the government remains silent in the face of these calls. The demands being placed on increasingly stretched law enforcement are enormous. So, ultimately, far greater emphasis must be placed on peace and security if we are to meaningfully address the issue of criminality and lawlessness in our country.

Ngwenya is president of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union