After President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address (Sona), finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s budget speech signals an important shift in South Africa’s law enforcement and national security.
Safety and security are now clearly understood as foundational conditions for growth, investment and collective wellbeing. We cannot grow our economy optimally in a climate characterised by fear, extortion and systemic violence.
For years fiscally constrained conditions meant the police, courts and military were managed as shrinking cost centres. Real per‑capita spending fell, vacancies soared and infrastructure decayed while state capture hollowed out capability. Private security proliferated, gated communities spread and businesses priced in the cost of guards, stolen cargo and insurance.
In this year’s Sona, the president framed safety and security as a strategic precondition for economic growth and prosperity. Our economy cannot thrive if organised crime, corruption and predatory violence dominate daily life. The budget speech followed through with a targeted allocation of R842.2bn for tackling crime and strengthening territorial integrity over the medium term ending in 2028/29.
Three elements stand out during this period: an increase of 11.6% in the South African Police Service (SAPS) budget in the medium term, with additional funds and resources dedicated towards tackling organised crime; increased investment in the courts and the prosecutorial system; and a focus on strengthening border security with increased allocations to the military and the Border Management Agency.
The SAPS and the South African National Defence Force each received an additional allocation of R1bn from the criminal asset recovery account to better tackle organised crime such as gang violence and illegal mining.
You cannot resuscitate Transnet or attract investment in logistics or construction if criminal groups are able to treat infrastructure as a feeding trough.
The National Treasury has taken the view that cutting frontline capacity in the police force is self‑defeating. This budget maintains recruitment levels and, crucially, ringfences money for specialised organised crime units. It is a move away from the “more boots on the ground” approach towards more “brains and backbone” in the system.
Moreover, the budget links new money to reforms. Additional allocations to the SAPS are tied to concrete milestones: consolidating scattered intelligence and organised‑crime units by establishing multi‑agency task teams in key crime markets (for example, illegal mining, extortion, cash‑in‑transit, and critical infrastructure), and rolling out modern case management and digital forensics tools.
The nexus between policing and investment is explicitly recognised. The president’s Sona commitment to “secure the corridors of growth” in ports, rail, strategic roads and energy infrastructure is backed by earmarked funding for integrated security operations along these routes. You cannot resuscitate Transnet or attract investment in logistics or construction if criminal groups are able to treat infrastructure as a feeding trough.
From a business perspective this is the right direction, but implementation will be the main challenge. Without determined action against police corruption and infiltration by organised crime, new technology and task teams will simply increase the price of the bribe. This is why building institutional resilience is crucial moving forward.
This budget recognises policing is part of a criminal justice system and that increasing resources and capabilities at the front end will lead to bottlenecks further down the line. Therefore, the justice department vote prioritises reducing court backlogs, strengthening the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) ability to run complex corruption and organised crime cases, expanding specialised sexual offences services and modernising court administration.
Funds are earmarked for expanding the NPA’s Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, rolling out electronic case files in high volume courts and hiring additional court support staff.
The message, echoed in the president’s Sona, is simple: serious crime must meet swift and predictable consequences. Investors, domestic and foreign, are watching for strong commitments to the rule of law and that high impact cases move from docket to conviction.
Importantly, the budget also nudges the justice system towards greater collaboration. Additional resources for the NPA and courts are tied to joint planning with the SAPS and South African Revenue Service (Sars) on priority cases and asset recovery. This reflects a recognition that you do not deter organised crime with street level arrests alone; you do it by freezing assets, dismantling networks and jailing enablers in the public and private sectors.
The Sona’s emphasis on “securing our borders and trade routes” and “protecting the integrity of our territory against trafficking and organised crime” is backed by allocations to upgrade border posts, equip select units for joint operations with the SAPS and Sars, and invest in surveillance on key sea and land corridors.
For business, this matters in three ways. First, porous borders and under-secured ports undermine legitimate trade and fuel illicit markets that compete unfairly with compliant firms. Second, the same routes used for smuggling drugs, weapons and contraband are often used for human trafficking and money laundering with corrosive social effects. Third, regional instability has direct implications for our energy security, mining investments and trade flows.
What makes this year’s Sona and budget different is not the absolute quantum of spending — we remain a fiscally constrained country — but the emerging strategic logic.
First, there is a clearer acknowledgement that safety and security are not “soft issues” to be postponed until growth returns. They are preconditions for growth. No serious logistics firm will plan a multibillion-rand investment on the back of collapsing infrastructure and rampant corruption. No global manufacturer will onshore higher value production into an environment where extortion syndicates extract through intimidation and threats of violence.
Second, there is a move towards targeted investments in the less visible but more critical parts of the system: detectives, analysts, prosecutors, digital infrastructure and border management.
Third, the recognition security is a whole‑of‑state and whole‑of‑society endeavour. The budget’s references to joint operations, integrated data platforms and partnerships with business will be deepened under presidential leadership in the coming months. As the president stated on January 27, the government-business partnership agreed to a more ambitious focus “to tackle organised crime, corruption and weaknesses in the criminal justice system”.
The greatest risk now is that additional funds simply flow into the old pipes: leaky procurement, politically protected senior appointments, misaligned incentives that reward arrests rather than convictions and a culture of impunity for officials who collaborate with criminals. The Madlanga commission and ad hoc parliamentary inquiries provide us with the opportunity to entrench a culture of accountability in the criminal justice system.
For business, the task is to support and leverage the parts of this new approach by sharing data, expertise and partnerships to assist in making anti‑organised crime and corruption initiatives effective.
The 2026 budget and Sona represent a strategic pivot: safety and security are being treated as the bedrock of economic recovery, not a residual. The criminal justice system departments are being nudged, through money and mandates, towards a more focused role in defending the conditions for growth. Working together we can make this a reality.
Cachalia is acting police minister.
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