Acting Minister of Police Firoz Cachalia revealed that his department has abandoned a timeline to introduce body cameras for all members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) nationwide.
In a written response to a parliamentary inquiry by the Democratic Alliance, the minister said that the procurement process was still ongoing and that the tender had not been concluded.
“South Africans deserve a police service that is transparent, accountable, and trusted. The acting minister should be speeding up delivery, not slowing it down,” said DA MP Mzamo Billy.
“Body-worn cameras improve transparency, preserve evidence, protect honest officers from false accusations and deter misconduct.”
He said that the DA would continue to push for the national rollout of police bodycams.
Mpho Matlala, a professor at the College of Law and School of Criminal Justice at UNISA, claimed that the lack of a timeline demonstrated poor planning and management, and a lack of political will.
Speaking to 702, he also suggested that budget restraints likely played a role in the delay.
“The police may not want to come clean that the budget is not there, because what we have is sufficient for operational planning and strategic objectives,” said Matlala.
“But this means that we will continue to have policing with poor accountability and a lack of commitment to rebuilding the brand of the SAPS. It is damaged, and it’s a risk to the strategic goals.”
He said that bodycams were necessary to modernise South Africa’s police services. Tools like bodycams and dashcams improve accountability and serve to protect both the officers and the public.
The SAPS reported last year that little progress had been made on the plan to procure body cameras for police officers, stating that the process was still in the contracting phase and that it had yet to be advertised, according to MyBroadband.
Cachalia said the SAPS also planned to train 100 members to be drone operators in the 2025/2026 financial year.
“The project will be running for a period of three financial years with a new allocation through the Discretionary Grant being allocated every year,” said the minister.
South Africa’s vehicle crime is going down
While South Africa’s crime stats are still extremely high, there has been some progress in reducing the number of vehicle-related incidents over the last year.
According to the SAPS latest records, a total of 3,609 carjackings took place in the fourth and final quarter of the 2025/2026 period.
This means that roughly 40 hijackings took place every day between January and March 2026, which is actually a 20.4% reduction from the same period one year earlier.
As many as 4,533 cases were reported to the SAPS in Q4 of the 2024/2025 period, equating to around 50 incidents per day.
Gauteng is the worst-affected province with 2,062 hijackings, more than half the national total, while the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal had 498 and 446 cases, respectively.
It’s a similar story for car theft, as 6,945 incidents were reported between January and March – a 10.2% year-on-year decline from the previous figure of 7,731.
Again, Gauteng had the most cases at 3,675, while KZN was second with 1,279, and the Western Cape was third with 920.
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