National context
- The peace and security budget increased from R244 billion in 2024/25 to R266 billion in 2025/26, constituting 10.3% of consolidated government expenditure of R2.59 trillion for the year. Of this, police services received R125 billion, law courts and prisons R54 billion, defence and state security R53 billion and home affairs R11 billion.
- The South African Police Service’s (SAPS) crime statistics for the 2024/25 financial year showed a slight decrease in contact crimes from the previous year to about 670 000 incidents, including 27 061 murders and 53 061 sexual offences.
- The SAPS and government hosted the first National Policing Summit over three days in April 2025. The summit brought together government officials, police leadership, academics and community members to discuss service delivery, the evolving policing landscape, harnessing the power of technology and strengthening the SAPS workforce. The summit ended with an agreement to establish a National Policing Summit Operations Room to track the progress of summit resolutions over the next five years.
- The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) and Asset Forfeiture Unit report that over R10 billion has been recovered in state capture-related cases since the SIU investigations began in 2018 up to March 2025.
- Government will finalise the Whistleblower Protection Framework and introduce the Whistleblower Protections Bill in Parliament before the end of this financial year in February 2026. In 2025, the police and government took significant steps to arrest people linked to the looting of state funds from Tembisa Hospital. Babita Deokaran, who worked in the Gauteng Health Department, was killed in 2021 after blowing the whistle on corruption worth billions at Tembisa Hospital.
- South Africa was ranked 124 out of 163 countries in the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index 2025, moving up three places from its 2024 ranking. The 2025 index found that the world became less peaceful for the 13th time in the past 17 years, with the average level of country peacefulness deteriorating by almost 0.4% over the prior year. This marks the sixth consecutive year that peacefulness has declined.
- The global Financial Action Task Force (FATF) greylisted South Africa in February 2023, subjecting it to additional oversight due to eight areas of deficiencies in tackling money laundering and illicit financial flows. As at June 2025, the country had completed all 22 action items and a FATF on-site visit was hosted in July 2025. On 24 October 2025, the FATF announced South Africa’s removal from the list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring after completing its action plan.
Overview of CSI spend
Safety and security initiatives were supported by 24% of companies and received 1% of average CSI expenditure.
- Non-specific general donations accounted for the largest portion of CSI safety and security spend (31%).
- At 21% (slightly down from 25% in 2024), road safety was the second-most supported intervention type in this sector.
- Less than 10% of average CSI spend on safety and security in 2025 went to infrastructure, facilities and equipment (8%), national anti-crime and safety campaigns (7%) and capacity building and empowerment programmes (6%).
- Two companies reported supporting interventions focused on victim empowerment and gender-based violence (GBV).
- Other intervention types received 15% of average CSI allocations in this sector.
[CASE STUDY] Safety by design: monitoring improved living conditions and safety in South African townships
For residents of South Africa’s informal settlements, safety is not a distant policy goal – it is a daily negotiation with risk. The physical environment, shaped by inadequate infrastructure and spatial exclusion, often amplifies vulnerability to crime and violence.
In response, the Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) programme has pioneered a model that uses urban design as a lever for social change, embedding safety into the very fabric of township development.
A monitoring approach grounded in community experience
Since its inception, VPUU has challenged conventional notions of crime prevention by integrating physical, social and institutional strategies. Its early work in Monwabisi Park, Khayelitsha, demonstrated how upgrading public spaces, improving lighting and strengthening community structures could reduce violence and foster a sense of safety.
VPUU’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework blends statistical indicators with qualitative insights. Recognising that a drop in reported crime does not always equate to increased perceptions of safety, the programme trains residents to conduct household surveys, map crime hotspots and monitor the functionality of basic infrastructure, such as taps and toilets. These activities not only generate actionable data but also build community ownership and trust.
Concrete results have emerged: in one area, access to early childhood development (ECD) increased from 19% to 53% within three years following the implementation of VPUU interventions. Enumeration exercises in Monwabisi Park also enabled the issuance of occupation certificates, strengthening tenure security.
Scaling safe node areas and partnerships
VPUU operates as a nonprofit entity (VPUU NPC), co-funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and implemented by AHT Group AG and SUN Development. It works closely with the City of Cape Town, the Western Cape Government and local civil society organisations, including the Khayelitsha Development Forum.
Recent Safe Node Areas include Gugulethu/Nyanga, Manenberg and Hanover Park, aligning with the City of Cape Town’s Spatial Development Framework and safety innovation goals. These areas benefit from the same integrated approach first piloted in Monwabisi Park, which combines infrastructure upgrades, community participation and institutional engagement.
Other Cape Town upgrading cases, such as Sheffield Road (Philippi) and Site C (Khayelitsha), echo VPUU’s finding that re-blocking and incremental upgrading – when coupled with strong community governance – can measurably improve perceptions of safety and access to services.
MEL as a tool for adaptive learning
VPUU treats MEL not as a static reporting mechanism but as a dynamic knowledge management tool. Lessons are learnt across shared partners, enabling continuous improvement and policy advocacy. For example:
- Infrastructure monitoring has revealed patterns of service delivery failure, prompting targeted interventions and faster repairs.
- Perception surveys have identified areas where residents still feel unsafe despite statistical improvements, leading to design adjustments and renewed dialogue.
This emphasis on contribution rather than attribution allows VPUU to trace plausible links between its strategies and observed shifts in safety, wellbeing and governance – a critical stance in contexts where multiple actors and long timelines make direct causality difficult to prove.
Institutional change driven by evidence
VPUU’s MEL approach has influenced municipal planning, with departments incorporating community-generated data into their processes. Civil society partners have adopted similar participatory tools and funders increasingly recognise the value of mixed-methods evaluation in complex urban environments.
The programme’s operations and maintenance (O&M) monitoring system, which involves twice-weekly inspections of taps and toilets and feeds GIS-linked dashboards, has been replicated by other Cape Town area-based initiatives, demonstrating transferability beyond VPUU’s immediate footprint.
Lessons for the future
VPUU’s trajectory shows that:
- Enumeration and tenure security must be community-led to ensure legitimacy.
- Infrastructure O&M monitoring can target vandalism hotspots and improve service reliability.
- Urban design changes should respond to perception data, not just crime statistics.
By combining built-environment upgrades, participatory governance and adaptive learning, VPUU offers a scalable model for safer, more inclusive South African townships.
