The South African Police Service has 18 000 less officers than it did in 2010. This is despite the country’s population growing to 60 million since that year.

South Africa has 182 000 police officers.

Police Minister Bheki Cele says that they haven’t trained any officers for the last two years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The police minister was speaking as more than 60 people are murdered each day in South Africa.

Analysts are also concerned that the budget allocations to ensure public safety are not being used. About R4 billion of the more than R 106 billion budget for policing had not been spent.

But Minister Cele says that it would be unfair to say that there is no money, rather that some policing functions are under-funded.