Who and what is AfriForum?

AfriForum is an Afrikaans civil rights organisation that protects the rights of minority groups at national as well as provincial level, and anyone who can identify with AfriForum’s principles and objectives may join the organisation. AfriForum’s community plan focuses on mobilising communities to thus take control of their own streets and neighbourhoods again. AfriForum ensures that your constitutional and civil rights are recognised and protected at national level.

Wie en wat is AfriForum?

AfriForum is ’n Afrikaanse burgerregteorganisasie wat die regte van minderheidsgroepe op sowel nasionale as provinsiale vlak beskerm, en enigiemand wat met AfriForum se beginsels en doelstellings kan identifiseer, mag by die organisasie aansluit. AfriForum se gemeenskapsplan fokus daarop om gemeenskappe te mobiliseer om só weer beheer terug te neem oor hul eie strate en woonbuurtes. AfriForum verseker dat jou grondwetlike én burgerregte op nasionale vlak erken en beskerm word.

Nearly 1,8 million unanswered 10111 calls constitute a national emergency, says AfriForum

Jacques Broodryk (English)

AfriForum has reiterated its call for communities to get involved in their own safety after shocking new statistics on the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) 10111 emergency call centres were revealed in a written parliamentary reply by Acting Minister of Police Firoz Cachalia. The figures expose a police emergency response system that is failing thousands of South Africans who depend on it when their lives are in danger.

During the 2025/2026 financial year, 1 790 428 calls to 10111 were abandoned. This represents approximately 20% of all calls presented to the system – effectively causing one in every five calls to be abandoned every day. Even more concerning is that the Minister has explicitly acknowledged that the ratio of call-centre operators to incoming calls is severely inadequate and that significant numbers of emergencies go unanswered.

“These are not merely administrative statistics. Behind every abandoned call could be a person reporting a farm attack, a family facing an armed home invasion, a hijacking victim or someone witnessing a violent crime. The consequences of these failures have already come to light,” says Jacques Broodryk, AfriForum’s Chief Spokesperson for Community Safety.

In August 2026, a witness to a horrific mob attack in Dunoon, Cape Town, reportedly phoned 10111 while witnessing people being assaulted and pushed towards a fire near the N7. Despite providing an approximate location using GPS, the caller allegedly struggled to get assistance because the operator demanded an exact location. The call was reportedly terminated. Four men were subsequently found dead, their bodies burnt.

Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police later confirmed that the handling of the call was unacceptable and that disciplinary action was being pursued. While it cannot be established that a different response would certainly have saved the victims, the incident raises questions about the system’s ability to respond to emergencies in progress.

In September 2026, Cape Town residents were again left without access to the 10111-emergency line when the service became unavailable in the city. The Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality had to direct residents to its own emergency communication centre as an alternative.

According to Broodryk, SAPS’ inability to provide an accurate operator-to-call ratio – citing the difficulty of extracting staffing information from individual shifts – is unacceptable and raises serious questions regarding accountability. It also admitted that the necessary statistics to track accountability for missed and mishandled calls cannot always be retrieved because of limitations in its systems.

“An emergency number is supposed to be the one number South Africans can rely on when they are in immediate danger. What happens when that lifeline simply does not answer? What happens when someone is being attacked, a family is being held at gunpoint and there is nobody on the other end of the line to send help?” asks Boordryk.

“We cannot normalise a situation where almost 5 000 calls for emergency assistance are abandoned every day. These calls represent real people reaching out for help, and the state has a responsibility to ensure that someone answers. South Africans should not have to rely on luck when calling for police assistance. Getting help in an emergency should never be a lottery.”

Communities are already having to take responsibility for their own safety through neighbourhood watches, farm watches and other lawful community safety initiatives. They do so because they cannot afford to wait for help that might never arrive. But community involvement cannot become an excuse for the state to abandon its constitutional responsibility to protect its citizens.

“Every unanswered emergency call represents a potential tragedy. Government cannot continue to measure this crisis in statistics while ordinary South Africans pay the price with their lives,” Broodryk concludes.