Police killing suspects in shootouts should not be seen as ‘taking a shortcut’, says MP
· Citizen
A member of parliament has warned that killing suspects will not solve South Africa’s crime problem.
June began with two more suspects being killed in a shootout with police in KwaMsane, adding to the list of at least five such incidents in May.
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The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) confirmed last month that it was investigating 464 such cases reported during the 2025-26 financial year, while the previous two years saw the deaths of 975 people due to police action in the field.
While not all deaths were shootout-related, police have repeatedly said that they are often left with no choice but to defend themselves.
“It is no secret that our men and women in blue are up against heavily armed criminals who have no regard for the rule of law,” suspended national police commissioner General Fannie Masemola previously said.
Over 30 cops killed in two years
Ipid revealed in May that it was investigating 3 913 cases of police misconduct reported in the 2025-26 financial year.
These included 116 alleged rapes by an officer, 3 147 assaults, 186 deaths in custody and 464 deaths due to police action.
Since 2021, the number of deaths by police action investigated by Ipid, excluding in detention, was 2 242.
As of April this year, 296 suspects had been killed in shootouts with police in KwaZulu-Natal in the last two years, with that pushing past 300 in the intervening weeks.
In addition to this week’s KwaMsane incident, eight suspects died in two shootouts with police in Hluhlulwe and Marian Hill in May.
Conversely, between April 2024 and March 2026, 31 police officers had been killed while on duty in a country that saw 5 181 murders and a further 149 086 contact crimes between January and March.
Among the causes were 10 officers shot while attending complaints, four while pursing suspects, four others killed while buying food and one shot dead after their vehicle had broken down.
While the dead have no recourse, Saps paid out R2.8 billion in civil claims since April 2022, with pending claims sitting at a potential R56.7 billion.
The civil cases brought against the police relate to unlawful arrest and detention, as well as assault.
‘Can’t simply applaud the killing’
The DA’s KwaZulu-Natal representative in the National Council of Provinces Mzamo Billy argued that due process should always be the priority for police.
“We can’t simply applaud the killing of suspects because South Africa is a constitutional democracy, meaning that even criminals and suspects have certain rights.
“Therefore, you want to put them through the criminal justice system where they can be processed accordingly and given a fair chance,” Billy told The Citizen.
However, he said a lack of resources was standing in the way of knowing for certain who was to blame.
Billy has championed the fight to have police wear body cameras to provide video evidence of these deadly encounters.
While a commitment to trial the cameras on a few hundred officers has been made, he said it was difficult to commit funds to technology when police were grossly underfunded.
“It becomes important really to resource our police officers, to resource our criminal justice system… to deal with crime accordingly.
“The use of police body-worn cameras is not just to catch out police but it is also to safeguard them from mischiefs against police and also to bring back the trust between the police and citizens,” Billy said.
He accepted the claims that policing was incredibly dangerous, but said without body-worn cameras, there was no clear oversight to establish exactly what happens in these deadly altercations.
“It is not the killing of suspects that is going to resolve the amount of crime we see in our communities because that could easily be perceived as taking a shortcut by simply eliminating criminal suspects,” Billy said.