10111 outage hits Cape Town as police turn to backup emergency lines – report

Cape Town – Cape Town residents are being urged to use alternative emergency contact numbers after the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) 10111 emergency line experienced disruptions in the city.

According to News24, SAPS has resorted to backup telephone lines while efforts are under way to restore the 10111 service.

Lieutenant General Sizakhele Dyantyi, the Western Cape police commissioner, confirmed that Telkom and SITA were working to get the 10111 emergency lines at the Maitland command centre back online.

“Telkom and SITA technicians are at the Maitland command centre right now, trying to restore the lines. It looks like the network is an issue onsite on that side,” the report quoted Dyantyi as saying on Tuesday.

The disruption raises concerns about access to urgent police assistance, as 10111 is SAPS’s designated 24-hour emergency number for reporting crimes and requesting an immediate police response.

SAPS says calls to the centre are recorded and complaints are assigned to the relevant police station, Community Service Centre sector vehicle or Flying Squad vehicle.

The problem comes amid longstanding concerns about the capacity of SAPS’s 10111 call centres. The police service’s 2024/25 annual report recorded 8.51 million calls received by its 20 10111 command centres during the financial year, with only about 845,795 classified as police-related emergency calls. SAPS said the high volume of non-emergency, nuisance and hoax calls places significant pressure on call-centre personnel.

There have also been concerns about dropped calls. An audit of SAPS’s 10111 system found a national average abandoned-call rate of 26.44%, while some centres recorded response times of between eight and 35 minutes. The audit attributed some of the dropped or abandoned calls to insufficient resources.

Alternative emergency numbers

Cape Town residents experiencing difficulty getting through to 10111 can make use of other emergency services, including the City of Cape Town’s emergency communication centre.

In recent comments reported by Eyewitness News, Cape Town mayoral committee member for safety and security JP Smith urged residents to save the City’s 021 480 7700 number.

“It’s the one single emergency number in the city that you need. And if you’re having challenges with 10111, please then immediately call our call centre,” Smith said.

He said the City’s Public Emergency Communication Centre could dispatch or connect callers to several services, including SAPS, Metro Police, traffic services, law enforcement, fire and rescue and ambulance services.

Smith also acknowledged problems with 10111, saying: “We can see this in our statistics because at those times, those calls end up with the City.”

The Western Cape Government lists 112 as the cellphone emergency number and 107 for emergencies from a landline, while 10111 remains the police emergency number.

SAPS has also warned members of the public not to rely on its social-media platforms to report emergencies, saying “there is no substitute for 10111, or call your nearest police station.”

The latest disruption adds to pressure on the police service to ensure that residents can reliably access emergency assistance when they need it most.