The credibility and integrity of legal authorities are fundamental to the stability, legitimacy and functional capacity of the state. Law enforcement institutions, particularly the police, sit at the core of this relationship.
The Madlanga commission has exposed the troubling disregard for legal norms by individuals entrusted with upholding and institutionalising the rule of law. This signals not merely individuals’ misconduct, but a broader institutional erosion that risks normalising impunity at elite levels of governance.
Moreover, if elite actors entrusted with safeguarding the rule of law appear compromised, the consequences reverberate throughout the state-society relationship. Public trust in law enforcement becomes a critical barometer of whether citizens perceive the state as legitimate, impartial and effective.
Such developments mirror and potentially intensify a legitimacy crisis in the way the police services interact with the public, itself illustrating the broader state-society relationship. When those responsible for enforcing the law appear detached from legal and ethical standards, public trust in institutions weakens, undermining voluntary compliance and co-operative governance.
The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), through its South African Social Attitudes Survey (Sasas), has consistently tracked public perception of crime and policing since 2003. These longitudinal data provide an important lens through which to assess whether elite-level institutional decay translates into declining public confidence in law enforcement and the state more broadly.
Over the 25-year period between 2000 and 2024/25, confidence in the police has never passed the 50% threshold, indicating a persistent structural trust deficit rather than episodic dissatisfaction. This suggests that reform efforts have not fundamentally altered public perceptions of police legitimacy.
Confidence declined sharply from 41% in 2010 to 28% in 2012, a period marked by escalating concerns over political interference in law enforcement and broader governance deterioration. While trust modestly recovered to 38% by 2014, this rebound did not represent institutional consolidation.
Past deployments have yielded short-term visibility but limited structural change, raising questions about whether military intervention simply compensates for failures within policing and prosecutorial institutions.
On the contrary, it may reflect shifting political leadership and heightened public visibility of accountability mechanisms, including the Zondo inquiry into state capture. The subsequent decline from 34% in 2018 to 22% in 2021 corresponds with widespread criticism of policing during the July 2021 unrest, reinforcing the sensitivity of public trust to institutional performance during crisis moments.
Confidence has since stagnated, suggesting entrenched scepticism rather than cyclical fluctuation. The Madlanga commission has since laid bare the depth of organised crime’s infiltration into the police service, blurring the line between enforcer and offender. In such circumstances distrust is structural.
No province recorded trust levels above 30% in 2024/25, highlighting the national depth of the legitimacy deficit. Such persistently low confidence in a coercive arm of the state signals a structural challenge to rule of law consolidation and voluntary compliance — both foundational to democratic stability. Almost all academic literature indicates that state monopoly over the use of violence is a fundamental condition for attaining stability.
Persistently low confidence in the police does not occur in a vacuum. When trust in civilian law enforcement deteriorates, political leaders face mounting pressure to demonstrate control and responsiveness.
Low confidence
Within this context, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced during the 2026 state of the nation address (Sona) that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) will be deployed to help tackle illegal mining and gang violence. While some have welcomed this decision, reliance on military intervention likely reflects diminished confidence in the state’s civilian law enforcement capacity.
Militarised responses can provide short-term stabilisation, yet they signal institutional substitution – one arm of the state compensates for perceived weaknesses in another. Yet the SANDF has hardly demonstrated that it can sustainably uproot illegal mining operations or sever those operations’ deep entanglement with violent organised crime.
Past deployments have yielded short-term visibility but limited structural change, raising questions about whether military intervention simply compensates for failures within policing and prosecutorial institutions.
Repeated reliance on the military in response to crime may over time desensitise citizens to its domestic presence. For residents in high-crime communities, the military may symbolise immediate security rather than democratic risk.
Public issue salience further contextualises this legitimacy crisis. While crime and security (35%) rank among major concerns, unemployment (55%) remains the dominant public priority, followed by water supply (31%), infrastructure (28%), and corruption (21%).
This order suggests that dissatisfaction with policing operates within a broader governance performance deficit, where economic insecurity and service delivery failures compound institutional mistrust.
Repeated reliance on securitised responses to crime can reshape public expectations about authority in general. Over time the boundary between civilian policy and military intervention becomes less distinct, potentially altering how citizens evaluate acceptable forms of governance.
Afrobarometer data suggests that such attitudinal shifts may already be under way. For the first time since the survey began in South Africa 25 years ago, respondents’ support for military rule now exceeds opposition. Between 2022 and 2025 support increased sharply from 28% to 49%, compared to a low of 16% in 2011. This surge coincides with historically low levels of public trust in the police; dissatisfaction with civilian law enforcement may be shaping openness to alternative forms of authority.
While causality cannot be definitively established, the growing normalisation of military deployment in domestic security contexts may contribute to shifting public attitudes. The SANDF played a visible role during the strict Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, and was deployed in 2019 to parts of Cape Town, specifically in townships experiencing heightened gang violence.
Repeated reliance on the military in response to crime may over time desensitise citizens to its domestic presence. For residents in high-crime communities, the military may symbolise immediate security rather than democratic risk.
Of course, rising openness to military rule does not emerge solely from exposure to securitisation. It is embedded within broader socioeconomic frustrations that shape how citizens interpret democratic performance. Persistent corruption, weak accountability and inadequate responses to poverty and unemployment signal governance failure.
While South Africa remains formally democratic, shifts in public attitudes suggest increasing openness to nondemocratic alternatives when democratic performance is perceived as inadequate.
These conditions create fertile ground for authoritarian appeals, identity-based exclusion and populist mobilisation. When democratic institutions are perceived as incapable of delivering security and economic opportunity, citizens may prioritise order and performance over procedural norms.
Strong econometric evidence indicates that democratisation causes economic growth. Typically, that growth generates a robust middle class that in turn sustains democratic consolidation, partly because a middle class invests in education and institutions. This serves as a buffer against populist exploitation of grievance.
However, in South Africa weak democratisation has failed to deliver the kind of economic engine required to build and maintain a robust middle class. Persistent inequality and rising poverty during deteriorating education outcomes render citizens both susceptible to being exploited by populists and expands appetite for military rule.
The state’s inability to address socioeconomic grievances does erode voter confidence and reshape political competition. It enables both right- and left-wing populists to frame complex structural problems as cultural or identity conflicts — particularly around migration, ethno-nationalism and belonging. In this context, reliance on military deployment represents a symptom management strategy, not a solution to underlying governance deficits.
Taken together, these trends — declining institutional trust, declining police legitimacy, rising openness to authoritarian alternatives and increasing reliance on military intervention — suggest not isolated governance failures but strain within the democratic social contract itself.
While South Africa remains formally democratic, shifts in public attitudes suggest increasing openness to nondemocratic alternatives when democratic performance is perceived as inadequate. Restoring institutional credibility, particularly within law enforcement, is therefore not only a matter of crime control but central to safeguarding democratic resilience.
• Dr Mongae is acting head of programme: governance insights & analytics at Good Governance Africa.
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