SAPS 10111 Failure Results in Vulnerable Communities as Bodies Pile Up

ActionSA condemns the outage of the SAPS 10111 emergency line in Cape Town, leaving residents without a critical lifeline to police assistance when they need it most.

It was revealed yesterday by the Western Cape Provincial Police Commissioner, Lt Gen Sizakhele Dyantyi, that the 10111 emergency line has been offline in Cape Town since 16:00 on 1 September 2026. This is completely unacceptable and represents yet another failure of the state to protect communities already being ravaged by crime, gangsterism and violence.

What makes this even more concerning is that the Provincial Commissioner has indicated that the outage is the result of a technical problem, with no clear timeline for when the emergency line will be restored. For residents who find themselves in an emergency, every minute matters. People should not be left wondering whether their call for help will even reach the police. 

This comes just days after the Minister of Police released the latest crime statistics, showing that the Western Cape continues to face an unacceptable murder and violent crime crisis – with 1 071 reported murders taking place in the first quarter of the latest financial year, and 11 Cape Town police stations ranking amongst the top 30 police stations when it comes to the highest murders reported at SAPS stations across the country. Behind every statistic is a person, a family and a community left to deal with the devastating consequences of crime.

Cape Town’s communities deserve better. SAPS members who put their lives on the line every day deserve better. And residents who pay their taxes and expect the state to protect them deserve better. We cannot normalise a situation where an emergency police number can simply go offline, with no certainty about when it will be restored, while our communities continue to face shootings, gangsterism, robberies and murders.

But keeping our communities safe cannot be the responsibility of the police alone. As citizens, we must also take responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of our neighbourhoods. We must look out for one another, protect our children, support community safety initiatives and refuse to allow criminals, gangs and those who prey on our young people to take control of our communities.

ActionSA calls on SAPS to urgently restore the 10111 emergency line and provide the public with a clear explanation of what caused this failure, what is being done to resolve it, and what measures are being put in place to ensure it does not happen again. Our communities cannot afford a police service that is unavailable when they need it most.

ActionSA JHB Success: Won 16% of the vote in Johannesburg in 2021.

Related: Technical Problems at Maitland 10111