Police were meant to begin a trial of body cameras for officers in April 2025, but the programme has still not begun.
The use of deadly force by South African Police Service (Saps) officers has prompted fresh calls to revisit the trial of body cameras for law enforcement.
Saps was due to begin trialling body cameras in April 2025, but that deadline has been missed, with no revised date provided.
Early cost estimates for such a programme were around R15 million and came with several other data and security concerns.
Police officers ‘left exposed’
Member of the Select Committee on Security and Justice and member of the National Council of Provinces, the DA’s Mzamo Billy, called for the police ministry to urgently update parliament on the body camera trial.
Nine months after the deadline for the trial had passed, parliament was still unaware of the cost and logistics associated.
Billy stated that body cameras would restore public trust by providing objective video documentation of police encounters.
“The continued absence of body-worn cameras places everyone at risk. Police officers are left exposed to contested versions of events, while communities are left without independent proof when lives are lost during Saps operations,” stated Billy yesterday.
“Policing in South Africa must be grounded in accountability, transparency and the protection of life,” he added.
Billy said that while each death at the hands of police was assessed by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), retaliation was too common an occurrence.
“While such claims are serious and must be properly tested, the repeated reliance on this explanation—without independently verifiable, objective evidence—undermines public confidence and highlights a critical gap in oversight,” stated Billy.
KZN police killings
His comments after a bloody week when five suspects wanted on murder and attempted murder charges were killed by police in Inanda in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Also in Inanda, police killed two more murder suspects who Saps claim had been terrorising community members.
“When police arrived at the scene, the suspects opened fire towards police officers and police retaliated,” confirmed KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) police spokesperson Colonel Robert Netshiunda.
On Monday evening, a KZN businessman and security guard were shot during a police raid on a residential premise — another incident where the deceased were alleged to have shot first.
KZN Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi had repeatedly warned criminals that opening fire on police would result in severe consequences.
Body cameras were first trialled in the United States (US) in the early 2010s, with the graphic footage often finding its way to social media.
However, the footage has often proved problematic for those wishing to prosecute police officers.
“The vast majority of times I viewed body camera footage is based on allegations from a defence attorney about what a cop did.
“And I would say 95% of the time it absolves the cop of wrongdoing,” former US Southern District of Ohio attorney David de Villiers told ProPublica last year.
‘High-stakes, fast-moving environments’
The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) weighed in on the debate in anticipation of a trial that never materialised.
IPID in 2024 recorded 460 deaths at the hands of police, with ISS Senior Researcher Anine Kriegler stating that body cameras could strengthen court evidence and lead to shorter trials.
However, she warned that body cameras “introduce a new layer of surveillance” that has not yet proven effective in deterring criminals.
“These cases often occur in high-stakes, fast-moving environments, where the presence of cameras alone is unlikely to alter behaviour in the moment.
“That is especially true in the absence of strong command oversight, consistent accountability and a well-established culture of restraint,” Kriegler wrote.
Additionally, the costs of data storage, maintenance and training related to such a programme needed to be factored in, as well as the long-term objectives.
“For the South African context, the Saps must first be clear about what problems they are trying to solve and what success would look like,” Kriegler stated.
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