Cape Town’s SAPS 10111 emergency line was offline for several hours before being restored shortly after 14:00 on Wednesday.
Image: File
Cape Town’s 10111 emergency call service was thrust back into the spotlight yesterday after the system remained offline for much of the morning and early afternoon, before being restored shortly after 2pm.
The outage affected SAPS’s emergency call system in the Western Cape and forced operators onto backup measures, raising fresh questions about the reliability of a service residents depend on during serious emergencies.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis described the disruption as unacceptable and urged residents needing assistance to contact the City’s Public Emergency Communication Centre on 021 480 7700.
“The SAPS 10111 outage is unacceptable in our city. If no one is answering the calls, we will never turn the tide on crime,” Hill-Lewis said.
He said the City’s emergency centre could dispatch Law Enforcement, Metro Police and Traffic Enforcement, while also relaying requests to SAPS and other emergency services.
Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith said the Public Emergency Communication Centre responded to more than 180 000 incidents annually and had 70 emergency communicators working around the clock.
Smith said crime-related reporting to the City had been increasing, in part because residents could not always rely on 10111.
The outage comes just days after renewed controversy around the handling of a 10111 call near Dunoon.
A motorist who witnessed people allegedly being assaulted near the Dunoon off-ramp contacted 10111 after seeing people being beaten and dragged towards a fire.
He alleged the operator repeatedly requested an exact location before the call was terminated when he could not provide one.
Four charred bodies were later discovered in the area.
SAPS subsequently confirmed that an internal investigation had been launched into the handling of the call, renewing scrutiny of emergency call protocols and the pressures faced by operators.
Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police chairperson, Ian Cameron, said the latest outage should not be viewed as an isolated technical glitch.
“The failure of SAPS’s 10111 emergency number in Cape Town is not simply another technical glitch. It is the latest warning that a critical part of our policing infrastructure is under severe strain,” Cameron said.
He said operators at the Maitland command centre had reportedly been forced onto backup phones while Telkom and the State Information Technology Agency worked to restore the system.
According to Cameron, concerns about malfunctioning phones and radios, outdated technology, staffing pressures and long shifts had been raised repeatedly.
He cautioned against blaming operators for broader systemic failures.
“These members perform an incredibly important frontline function. We should not make the people answering the phones convenient scapegoats for systems and management failures around them,” he said.
Cameron also pointed to the latest Stats SA Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey 2025/26, saying it painted a concerning picture of crimes that were never reported to police.
According to the survey, there were an estimated 515 000 street robberies during the past year, with 58.3% of victims reporting none of the incidents to police.
Among those who did not report, 36.8% said they believed police would do nothing.
The survey also estimated 1.549 million housebreaking incidents, with only 48.2% of affected households reporting some or all of them to SAPS.
Cameron said this raised questions about whether falling recorded crime figures alone could be used as a measure of improving policing.
“You cannot ask people to trust the police and report crime when they cannot reliably reach them in an emergency,” he said.
He called for greater investment in functioning 10111 centres, detectives, crime intelligence, forensic support and modern technology, saying policing also needed stronger leadership and accountability.
“The real question is much simpler: are we catching the people causing the most harm, are we building cases that can be successfully prosecuted, and are ordinary South Africans becoming safer?” he said.
During the outage, residents were urged to use 021 480 7700, 107 from a cellphone or 0860 142 142 for emergency assistance.
