The Democratic Alliance is demanding that police leadership suspend, without delay, every officer accused of rape, gender-based violence and femicide, arguing that the South African Police Service’s internal disciplinary machinery is failing at a measurable scale. The party wants allegations against officers investigated speedily and thoroughly, and any officer found guilty dismissed immediately.
The demand rests on new figures from the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. IPID recorded 332 gender-based violence and femicide related cases involving police officers in 2025/26, of which 116 were alleged rape cases. That works out to an alleged rape involving a police officer being recorded once every three days during the year. The number is also rising: 116, up from 95 the previous year.
The operational detail behind those numbers is what the party says makes the situation untenable. IPID reported that 72 of the alleged rape cases involved officers who were on duty at the time. On that basis, once every five days an on-duty police officer is allegedly committing a rape while on duty.
Lisa Schickerling MP, who released English and Afrikaans soundbites on the figures, said it is unacceptable that rape cases are being brought against active police officers at a rate of one every three days. Her response is directed at the officials responsible for running the service. She will write to Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia calling on him to take responsibility for serious improvements in how SAPS vets, disciplines and deals with officers accused of these serious crimes.
The letter asks for a full account of action taken against officers implicated in these cases, including how many have been suspended, dismissed, convicted or remain in active service. That accounting, in the DA’s view, is the baseline for judging whether the service’s internal processes are functioning at all.
Schickerling argued that an overhaul in culture, leadership systems and the management of officers is needed to address the problem, alongside criminal prosecution of the offenders themselves. Cachalia, she said, must restore law and order internally in the police.
The accountability mechanisms the DA intends to use are parliamentary. The party says it will continue to use every parliamentary oversight mechanism available to ensure that SAPS officers accused of gender-based violence and femicide are held accountable, and that serious allegations are properly investigated and acted upon.
At the centre of the party’s argument is a question of service reliability. The people of South Africa, Schickerling said, cannot be expected to trust police officers to protect them from violence while officers themselves are accused of rape and other forms of gender-based violence and femicide. Officers who commit crimes, she added, must know that they will be prosecuted and punished.
The framing is blunt about the contradiction the figures expose. It cannot be, she said, that at a time when the country faces a serious scourge of murder and rape of women, the police themselves are implicated in one rape every three days. That, she argued, must be addressed immediately.
The DA’s position is that there can be no double standard: those entrusted to uphold the law must be held to the highest standards of accountability, with urgent action, transparency and consequences for those found guilty. Whether that happens now depends on the Acting Minister’s response to the letter, and on what the requested accounting of suspensions, dismissals and convictions reveals about how the service has handled the officers implicated in the 332 cases IPID recorded in 2025/26.