SAPS audit findings rise as Parliament questions performance

By SA Business Lens
Prepared 24 October 2026

A parliamentary review of the 2025/26 annual report raises questions about the evidence behind police performance claims.

Editorial illustration of an office telephone and files; not an actual SAPS office or case record.

Parliament’s Select Committee on Security and Justice says material findings on the South African Police Service’s reported performance increased from 14 to 19 in the latest audit cycle, despite a sixth consecutive unqualified opinion on its financial statements.

The committee set out its concerns on Thursday, 22 October, after reviewing the SAPS 2025/26 annual report. It requested a post-audit action plan covering commitments made at the meeting. Parliament’s statement

For the public, the distinction between those two audit results matters. An institution can produce financial statements that pass audit scrutiny while still having serious weaknesses in the information it uses to describe its work.

What an unqualified opinion tells us

The Auditor-General of South Africa distinguishes between an unqualified financial opinion and a clean audit outcome. The first concerns the financial statements. A clean audit also requires an absence of material findings on performance reporting and compliance with key legislation. AGSA’s explanation of audit outcomes

Neither label is a guarantee that every service works well. AGSA explicitly cautions that an annual audit does not provide assurance that service delivery has been achieved. Reliable reporting should make it easier to see both success and failure, rather than serve as a substitute for results. AGSA on the limits of an audit

Where the committee raised concerns

According to the committee, inadequate supporting evidence affected reported achievements involving 10111 emergency calls, firearm recoveries and detective detection rates.

It also identified concerns involving the Investigation Case Docket Management System, forensic examination delays and 10111 command centres. These are the committee’s account of the audit findings, not an independent verification of individual cases by SBL.

The committee acknowledged a SAPS recovery plan addressing fleet and infrastructure, and Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia’s call for realistic targets. Parliament’s account

Why the supporting records matter

The practical concern is whether a reported improvement can be checked.

Take emergency calls. A measure of calls handled answers a different question from how quickly officers reached a caller. Both can be useful, but readers need to know precisely what is being measured and which records support the result. A headline percentage without that information can leave an important part of the service invisible.

The same distinction matters in investigations. Identifying a suspect, completing an investigation and securing a conviction describe different stages. Treating them as interchangeable would obscure where a case is progressing or getting stuck.

For a household waiting for help, or a business trying to follow up a robbery, those distinctions are practical. They shape the questions people should be able to ask about what happened after a call or complaint.

What the figures do not establish

The increase from 14 findings to 19 is five additional findings, equivalent to about 35.7%. It is a change in the number of audit findings, not a measure of how much crime increased or how much policing deteriorated.

The figures alone also cannot show whether every finding is equally serious or how many people were affected. That requires the detail behind each finding, its scope and the corrective response.

Crime trends need their own evidence. SBL’s review of South Africa’s crime statistics considers changes across different offences and explains why recorded crime totals cannot tell the whole story.

What to look for in the response

A useful way to assess the next update is to ask whether each problem has a named responsible official, a deadline and evidence that the fix works. These are tests for judging progress, rather than a timetable announced by the committee.

For the disputed performance information, that means looking for corrected figures where necessary and an explanation of how the underlying records will be checked. For operational problems, it means reporting the relevant service result, not simply that a meeting was held or a system purchased. In forensic work, that could include turnaround times and outstanding examinations measured on a consistent basis.

The announced R810 million SAPS fleet allocation provides a separate funding context. The question to follow is how resources translate into vehicles available for duty and usable investigative capacity.

The next meaningful improvement will be one the public can trace from a commitment to a verifiable result.