Rape kit shortages in the Western Cape: SAPS must be held accountable

At the culmination of the 16 days of activism for no abuse against women and children a DA oversight visit uncovered that whilst the Government was making a big song and dance about its commitment to ending this epidemic, the South African Police Services in the Western Cape, led by Lieutenant- General Thembisile Patekile, was not able to deliver a basic, crucial service needed to ensure that rapists and child abusers are convicted.

By all accounts, the first thing a victim wants to do after being violated, is take a shower. However, in order to ensure that evidence is preserved and can be properly collected by way of the SAPS D1 rape kit for adults or the D7 rape kit for children, victims are advised not to do so.

This advice is well-known – and so too the notion that the sooner evidence is collected, the better the chances of preserving it so that the Police and, ultimately, the National Prosecuting Authority can build and prosecute a case against the perpetrator. If they are apprehended, of course.

For most South Africans, the phrase rape kit shortage sounds like something that should never happen in a functioning democracy. But in the Western Cape this is exactly what happened.

What we found was shocking; not only because of the sheer scale of the shortages, but because SAPS leadership had repeatedly insisted that “there is no crisis.” According to them, the Western Cape had more than 3 700 rape kits. But that was only on paper.

When the DA walked into the Western Cape’s SAPS Supply Chain Store in Epping on 9 December, the shelves that were supposed to hold this lifesaving forensic equipment were empty.

A day later, at the National SAPS Supply Chain facility in Silverton, Gauteng, we confirmed that national headquarters did have stock and that, within hours of our oversight a requisition was mysteriously rushed off to Pretoria: 1 540 D1 kits and 1 300 D7 kits suddenly ordered after ten months of silence between these offices. In fact, when I arrived at the Silverton site that morning, the kits were hurriedly being counted for dispatch.

This was an untenable failure of the vulnerable members of our society – by the very people who are meant to serve and protect.

This Patekile-led failure also exposed something far more worrying about SAPS management in the Western Cape.

A certificate signed on December 2, by Major General Jojo confidently stated the number of rape kits available at each of the Western Cape’s 172 police stations.

But when the DA walked into stations just a week later, the numbers immediately fell apart.

• Sea Point allegedly had 59 D1 kits; we found 4.

• Cape Town Central allegedly had 41 D1 kits; we found zero.

• Paarl allegedly had 5 adult kits; we found none.

• Athlone allegedly had 20 adult kits; every one of them was expired.

The paper and the real, cruel world out there no longer resembled one another.

Even more alarming was the discovery that the certificate itself was riddled with outdated information and the remnants of a monthly tick-box exercise which Provincial top brass do not believe deserves verification.

Patekile has, over the past year, taken no responsibility for several serious failures which can directly be linked to his mismanagement. One of these was the availability of only one narcotics K9 dog in the Cape Town metropolitan area – often referred to as South Africa’s gang capital. The same General who overturned the dismissal of police members who were found guilty of serious crimes, such as fraud and possession of drugs.

We speak about rape in numbers. We report on statistics. We talk about “cases opened” and “convictions sought.” But rape is not a statistic. It is a moment of devastation for the person who walks into a police station seeking help while traumatised, bleeding, shaking, terrified.

Imagine a woman in Redelinghuys — one of the stations reflected as having zero D1 kits, while neighbouring Elands Bay and Piketberg equally reflect zero. She may have been raped.  And all she wants to do is go home, cry and take a shower - to wash away what happened, even if she knows she never truly can. But she can't. Because the moment she showers, all the evidence that could put her rapist behind bars begins to wash away with the water on the floor.

So she must sit, unwashed, traumatised, waiting for help. But help is not there. Not in her town. Not in the next town. Not even in the next-closest station.

In the far reaches of the Central Karoo - where towns are hundreds of kilometres apart and sitting Mayors have rape and sexual assault convictions - we found one D1 kit and one D7 kit to service multiple communities. This statistic was indeed reflected on the certificate signed by Major General Jojo on December 2, 2025.

If a child is sexually assaulted in Prince Albert or Murraysburg, their closest usable kit might be hours away. Every minute lost degrades the DNA that could identify the perpetrator.

This is the brutal reality of SAPS management’s failure under Lieutenant- General Patekile.

On December 15, 2 840 rape kits finally arrived in Cape Town. This was a direct result of DA oversight, pressure and exposure. However, these kits all have an expiry date of April 2026. That gives the SAPS less than four months before much of this stock becomes unusable – which begs the question why the National Supply Chain office provided them in the first place.

The DA has been monitoring the distribution of these kits and will continue to push for the delivery of new kits at every station across the province before April 2026.

But we will also continue to ask questions about the pattern of continued mismanagement by the Western Cape’s Provincial Police Commissioner - a pattern the DA has consistently exposed in 2025:

• Multiple escapes from custody at stations including Wynberg, Strand, Bellville, Sea Point and Robertson.

• A sharp rise in gang-related murders in areas such as the Cape Flats, Atlantis, Khayelitsha and Mfuleni.

• The critical collapse of K9 units, leaving communities without essential search and rescue or anti-crime capabilities.

• The slow response to firearms mismanagement and the ballooning number of lost or stolen SAPS weapons.

The rape kit scandal is simply the latest, most devastating, example of failed SAPS leadership. Survivors of rape, women and children seeking justice and SAPS officers trying to do their jobs have been betrayed by a system that cannot even provide the most basic forensic tool needed to prosecute violent sexual crimes.

The Western Cape needs and deserves a competent Provincial Commissioner; one who can protect communities, prioritise resources, motivate our hard working men and women in blue, restore public confidence in a police service that has lost its way – and one that respects the work of Parliament in its oversight duty.

* Gotsell is DA NCOP Member on Security & Justice.