One of the biggest challenges facing South African Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu, is the fragmented character of policing in the country. In metropolitan areas in particular, various local, provincial and national agencies with overlapping mandates perform policing functions. Effective crime responses require the coordinated management of these resources.
Mchunu has prioritised ensuring greater cooperation on safety in the metro areas. In the past six months, the Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and eThekwini metros have all signed cooperation agreements with the SAPS. Provincial governments are co-signatories.
For these initiatives to strengthen policing and public safety, they must also tackle endemic corruption by traffic police, who account for over 40% of police personnel in each of these metros (with the SAPS making up the balance).
Police officials reporting to most metropolitan and provincial governments are essentially traffic police. For example, in Gauteng’s three metros (Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and Tshwane), agencies involved in policing (besides the SAPS) include the metropolitan police departments (one in each metro), Gauteng Traffic Police and Gauteng Traffic Wardens. (‘Gauteng Traffic Wardens’ is the current title of the Crime Prevention Wardens established in 2023.) Apart from the SAPS, the primary function of all these agencies is traffic enforcement.
The metros are a magnet for corruption-oriented traffic police partly because they are where most traffic is concentrated. This includes much of the private-public transport provided by the minibus taxi industry, a principal target for corrupt traffic officers.
National victimisation surveys have repeatedly identified traffic police as the government service most strongly associated with graft (see table). The 2022/23 Stats SA Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey revealed that more traffic officials than any other government officials asked individuals for bribes in 2019/20 and 2022/23.
Soliciting bribes is deeply embedded in traffic policing in South Africa. Six of the nine national surveys conducted since 2003 that asked about bribery, identified traffic police as the government service most frequently linked to corruption.
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Traffic policing corruption reported in South African national victimisation surveys
 Source: Source: NVCS - National Victims of Crime Survey; GPSJS - Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey. Surveys from 2010 onwards conducted by Stats SA |
Based on current population figures and recent Statistics SA surveys, it may be estimated that roughly 870 000 people in South Africa had bribes solicited from them by traffic police in 2024 (2% of the adult population).
SAPS corruption also features prominently in Stats SA survey results. But the findings show that graft linked to traffic policing is the most brazen form of police corruption in South Africa.
Other forms of corruption that tend to be associated with the SAPS, such as the sale of dockets, or revealing complainants’ identity to gang lords, are more serious as individual incidents. But the cumulative impact of rampant corruption by metro police and other agencies involved in traffic policing, tarnishes the name of all police in the country.
A major study of traffic policing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital Kinshasa found that police revenue from bribes far exceeded that from traffic fines. The study also showed that traffic policing corruption ‘operates as a coordinated system rather than as isolated acts of individual misconduct.’
The level of graft in traffic policing in South Africa suggests that these findings may also be relevant here.
Agencies involved in investigating police corruption include the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks), the SAPS and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. But there is little coordination between them, and none pays sustained attention to corrupt traffic law enforcement. Some metros or traffic police departments have their own integrity units – but there is little evidence of their efficacy.
In recommendations on strengthening the SAPS released in June 2024, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) called for SAPS to establish a ‘well-resourced National Anti-Corruption Unit that is protected from interference.’ It said this unit should address police corruption ‘in all policing agencies’ – which would include traffic police. The ISS also called for dedicated disciplinary measures to expedite cases involving allegations of serious police misconduct.
Mchunu’s efforts to improve cooperation among law enforcement entities in the metropolitan areas are necessary and important. In Gauteng, the three metros account for 84% of community-reported serious crime in the province. In the Western Cape, the City of Cape Town accounts for 64%.
The metros are the engine rooms of South Africa’s economy – so they must be much safer. That requires partnerships not only between law enforcement entities but also between the police, public and private sector. Corruption, including by traffic police, undermines prospects for viable partnerships.
Section 205(1) of the Constitution allows SAPS to be present at metro level, and metro command structures have recently been introduced in line with the district development model. But SAPS remains primarily built around national and provincial levels of command, and struggles to ensure effective metropolitan-level coordination of its own resources.
Related to this, there is currently no effective mechanism for ensuring coordinated use of policing personnel in the metros. In each metropolitan area, a mechanism is needed to coordinate national, provincial and local government police and law enforcement resources. Partnerships are unlikely to work well unless responsibility for overall leadership is clear.
But all the work required to coordinate these resources will be of limited value unless purposeful steps are taken to restore public respect for the police – including SAPS, metro and other officers. This cannot be done without confronting endemic corruption in traffic law enforcement, a problem that is most pronounced in metropolitan areas.
David Bruce, Independent Researcher and ISS Consultant
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