South Africans Lose Faith in Justice System as Crime Goes Unpunished

Ninety-six point four percent. That is the share of 2,057 South Africans surveyed in February 2026 who said there is no justice for crime in their country. Just over 90% reported they had not personally received justice for a criminal offence in the past 20 years. The resulting trust score, measured by Action Society’s Criminal Justice Trust Indicator, was four out of 100.

For the people behind those numbers, the question is not abstract. When a murder, rape, robbery or extortion case lands on a police desk, victims face a single haunting question: will anything actually happen? The survey answers that question plainly. It will not.

This is not a failure of individual officials or a temporary resource problem. It reflects a structural design flaw that has hollowed out public confidence in the entire system. South Africans do not experience the criminal justice apparatus as a pathway from harm to accountability. They encounter it as a pipeline where cases stall, disappear, collapse or drag on until witnesses exhaust their patience and victims abandon hope.

The consequences extend far beyond individual trauma. Criminological research has established for decades that the strongest lever for reducing crime is not harsher sentences, political rhetoric or police visibility alone. The decisive factor is certainty of consequence. People refrain from crime when they believe they will be caught, prosecuted and face real punishment. When that belief evaporates, the expected cost of offending collapses. Crime thrives in the gap between law and enforcement.

South Africa’s system has created precisely that gap. When asked where delays originate, 85.4% of survey respondents identified the South African Police Service and the courts as the bottleneck. Some 98% believe criminals escape accountability for serious offences.

The debate over devolved policing powers has gained traction in recent years, particularly in capable provinces and metros like the Western Cape. Local governments deploy law-enforcement resources, gather intelligence, support neighbourhood safety and respond to crime patterns far closer to the ground than national institutions can manage. Devolved investigative powers represent a logical step toward more responsive, locally accountable policing.

But investigation alone cannot close the justice gap.

A well-prepared docket requires a prosecutor. A lawful arrest requires an enrollment decision. If investigative functions are localised while prosecution remains trapped in a centralised bottleneck, the certainty of consequence does not improve. The National Prosecuting Authority contains many committed prosecutors, but the institution operates within a system overwhelmed by volume, backlog, withdrawals and poor coordination. A single national prosecuting authority cannot be the only pathway through which every community seeks accountability.

The constitutional architecture that created this centralised model may have served a purpose when Section 179 was drafted. Uniformity seemed essential at that moment. But constitutional design must serve the public, not become an untouchable principle before which victims are sacrificed. If the current model no longer delivers justice at scale, it must be reconsidered.

South Africa should amend Section 179 to permit provincial prosecutorial powers, linked to devolved investigative powers, under strict national standards. A provincial prosecution service should operate only where clear objective criteria are met. Prosecutors must act without fear, favour or prejudice. National norms must apply uniformly. The National Director of Public Prosecutions should retain oversight powers in matters of national importance, organised crime spanning provinces or cases involving clear conflicts of interest.

The default assumption must shift. Pretoria should no longer be permitted to fail centrally while preventing capable provinces from succeeding locally.

International examples offer instructive lessons. Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption did not treat corruption as a policing problem alone. Its model combined investigation, prevention and public education. Crucially, it understood that investigations must be prosecution-ready. The ICAC does not prosecute itself but forwards evidence to Hong Kong’s Department of Justice, whose Prosecutions Division advises investigators and exercises prosecutorial discretion. Specialised investigation works only when tightly linked to a capable, independent prosecution function. That missing link is precisely what South Africa lacks.

Decentralised policing without decentralised prosecution is like building a road that stops at the courthouse door.

A provincial prosecution model would also bring accountability closer to the people most affected by crime. Today, victims often have no meaningful way to know why their case is delayed, withdrawn or ignored. Action Society witnesses this failure daily in courts across the country. The gap between a reported crime and a resolved case is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. For the people living inside it, it is the entire experience of justice.

Years ago, devolved policing sounded far-fetched. Today it occupies serious public debate. The same shift must happen with prosecution. South Africans do not need another promise that the National Prosecuting Authority must “do better.” Victims have heard that for years. They need a system redesigned around certainty of consequence.

When the criminal justice system scores four out of 100, the status quo has lost the right to be treated as sacred. The question now is whether the political will exists to redesign the system before another generation of victims is told to wait.