NORTH WEST — A sweeping new investigation has confirmed that North West police and correctional facilities fail compliance audit benchmarks, according to a critical report published by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). The findings detail extensive regulatory breaches by the South African Police Service (SAPS), the Department of Correctional Services, and the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure regarding the operational state of provincial detention and law enforcement sites.
Stemming from a rigorous evaluation conducted between 2023 and 2025, the commission’s audit paints a grim picture of regional infrastructure. Out of 86 police stations evaluated across the province, 66 were found to be in direct violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The catalog of deficiencies is extensive, ranging from chronic shortages of personnel and patrol vehicles to the complete absence of CCTV surveillance and functional ablution facilities within holding cells. Overcrowding and substandard detainee care were also heavily cited as ongoing concerns.
The systemic neglect extends deeply into the province’s correctional centers. The probe identified roughly 10 detention facilities operating without essential maternity wards, regular fire safety drills, or sufficient food provisions. Furthermore, the report highlighted a dangerous practice: the failure to adequately separate detainees suffering from mental illnesses from the general inmate population.
Sherley Mlombo, Manager at the SAHRC, noted that these red flags were not anomalies. “As we were doing that monitoring work, we kept picking up the same issues in those facilities,” Mlombo explained. “Issues relating to infrastructure, overcrowding, vehicle shortages, and staffing shortages. As we kept picking up the same issues in various stations, we realized that the issues are not isolated, but there are systemic issues there which warranted that the issue then be looked at and investigated by the South African Human Rights Commission at a systemic level.”
Labor unions representing correctional and policing personnel argue that leadership has consistently ignored their warnings. Tlou Mpherwane, Secretary for the North West SAPU, stated that shutting down substandard locations might be the only way to compel government intervention.
“If they see that the facilities are not in a good standard, it should be closed,” Mpherwane asserted. “We send a message to the government to say, look, take people seriously. Once you close the facilities, that’s when this is the language that they can understand. That is not the way we want to go, but that is the only option that is left on the table now.”
Johannest Dire, North West POPCRU Secretary, pointed to bureaucratic confusion as a root cause of the decay. He issued a “clarion call for the correct framework in terms of responsibilities and functions of the department with the supply chain,” specifically regarding the maintenance of buildings shared by SAPS and Correctional Services. Dire warned that this “disenfranchisement of functions” within the criminal justice cluster creates a “very serious threat to the functioning and capacity of the department.”
In response to the mounting pressure, law enforcement leadership maintains that they are reviewing the documentation. Adele Myburgh, Police Spokesperson, confirmed receipt of the findings. “The South African Police Service in the North West did receive the Human Rights Commission report on our detention facilities. We are currently studying the report and coming up with remedial actions,” Myburgh stated.
The SAHRC has not left the remediation process open-ended, imposing strict deadlines for corrective measures. Mlombo outlined a tiered approach: some violations demand immediate rectification, while others have been assigned a 90-day window. More complex, long-term infrastructural deficits must be resolved within 24 months.
While departments are instructed to collaborate with the Department of Public Works to resolve these issues, the SAHRC emphasized that the primary agencies remain the “ultimate duty bearers.” Mlombo clarified that if Public Works falters, the responsible departments must still exhaust every avenue to fix the identified problems and can subsequently hold the infrastructure department accountable for its failures.
At the time this report was finalized, the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure had not issued any response to media inquiries regarding the audit’s severe allegations or the mandated corrective timelines.
