Portfolio Committee on Police Chairperson Ian Cameron joins Point of View to unpack shocking parliamentary figures revealing that nearly 1.8 million calls to the 10111 emergency line went unanswered over the past year.
By Zuko Komisa
When an emergency strikes, dialling 10111 is meant to connect South Africans to immediate help. Yet shocking new figures revealed in Parliament show that nearly 1.8 million of the roughly nine million calls made to the police emergency line during the 2025/26 financial year were abandoned a failure rate of more than 20%.
Speaking on Point of View with Phemelo Motene, Portfolio Committee on Police Chairperson Ian Cameron unpacked the alarming parliamentary response from Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia.
While the national average sits at one in every five calls going unanswered, regional breakdowns paint an even bleaker picture, with KwaZulu-Natal recording an abandonment rate of 56.4% alongside hundreds of thousands of dropped calls in the Western Cape.
“I think what is really concerning about it is that the large majority of South Africans don’t have access to a private security service of some kind,” Cameron said.
“It totally depends on that phone being answered. It’s critical for them to know that there’s a trustworthy voice on the other side.”
According to Cameron, abandoned calls stem from a combination of technical failures, unanswered lines, and callers giving up after lengthy delays. In severe cases, operators have allegedly hung up on distressed citizens such as a recent incident in Dunoon, Cape Town, where a caller reporting an active mob attack was disconnected, leaving police unable to trace the location.
Although Cameron commended Acting Minister Cachalia for breaking two years of silence and being transparent about the crisis, the underlying causes are deeply systemic.
Many call centres are critically understaffed; Cape Town’s Maitland centre, for instance, frequently operates with just six or seven operators per shift despite having capacity for 20. Compounding the human resource shortage are recurring electricity outages, unpaid telephone lines, and outdated software that prevents some centres from even logging basic call data.
“Now, if that’s the case for basic information that is critical for us to try and improve this, how do we expect the actual system to function properly when ordinary South Africans need emergency support?” Cameron asked, noting that standard commercial call centres easily track call durations and drop-off metrics.
With no concrete turnaround strategy yet presented by police leadership, Cameron believes the South African Police Service (SAPS) must look beyond state capacity and embrace urgent public-private partnerships to modernise its technology, including basic geolocation and callback features.
“The point is that SAPS needs to sit around the table,” Cameron urged. “Go, for example, to Business Against Crime, which does phenomenal work in South Africa, and say, ‘We’ve got six months. What can we do to really spearhead this and show proper results within six months to a year?’ There’s no reason not to.”
Listen to the podcast for the full conversation. Kaya 959 podcasts are available to download.
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