Illustrative Image: Magnifying glass. | South African flag. | Graph. (Photos: Freepik) | Crime scene tape. (Photo: iStock) | Forensic personnel at a crime scene in Randfontein. (Photo: Gallo Images / Sharon Seretlo) An official South African Police Service (SAPS) communication has instructed officers to ensure that suspects killed in self-defence shootouts are still criminally charged for that incident, and any other cases linked to them at the time.
The three-page communication, dated November 2025, is addressed to the country’s provincial police bosses and asks that they notify “all members under your command”.
It says that when a suspect is killed during a shootout with police officers or with a private individual acting in self-defence, “the deceased person must be charged” on the Crime Administration System (CAS) or the Integrated Case Docket Management System (ICDMS) in relation to all the case dockets linked to them.
This instruction was signed by the police’s acting divisional head of detective and forensic services, Major General RM Mogale.
‘Ludicrous’ vs crime-fighting
Some in police and legal circles find the instruction bizarre, with one lawyer describing it as “illogical and preposterous” and another saying it is “ludicrous”.
Policing sources are also worried it can be used for underhanded reasons, such as manipulating crime statistics.
National police bosses, though, appear to be of the view that crimes need to be answered for, even in death (and even if a suspect has not been convicted).
Daily Maverick understands the rationale behind this to be: if a wanted suspect shoots at police officers who are pursuing them, their resistance to the officers’ actions clearly implies there is something criminal they are trying to evade.
It is not uncommon for police officers – and suspects – to be killed in shootouts in South Africa.
‘Distorts official detection rates’
The November SAPS communication says: “During feedback from the provinces regarding their successes, it was established that when a suspect is shot and killed during a shootout with members of the South African Police Service, the deceased person is not always charged on CAS/ICDMS on all the cases these suspects (deceased persons) are linked with.”
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Bheki-Taxi-ehailing-war1.jpg "Forensic police officers at the Maponya Mall in Soweto on 14 August 2025, the day after gunmen killed a ride-hailing driver at the mall. (Photo: Emmanuel Croset / AFP)")
It explains that a detective service output for the 2025/26 financial year involved the detection rate of contact crimes – murders and crimes against women and children.
The instruction adds: “When a suspect is killed during a shootout with the South African Police Service, or when a private person, during self-defense kills the suspect, the deceased person must be charged on the CAS/ICDMS on all the case dockets he/she is being linked with.”
It goes on to explain, with screen-grab images, “the procedure when charging a deceased person”.
The instruction flags an “important note” – that “failure to correctly charge and finalise a deceased suspect as ‘File – Deceased’ negatively impacts station performance statistics and distorts official detection rates on the Crime Administration System”.
A docket, it says, must be closed under the status "File - Deceased."
It is dated about a week before the official SAPS crime statistics covering April to September 2025 were released to the public in November last year.
‘Even in death you will be charged’
This week, Daily Maverick asked the SAPS whether the national instruction was legitimate, and national spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe responded via an explanation.
She said: “To clarify the matter, if you are a wanted suspect and police trace you, and you charge at police, and there is a shootout, and a suspect dies, even in death you will still be charged with the cases you were facing, etc, armed robberies, aggravated robberies, rape.
“Only then will the cases against the deceased suspects be regarded as solved and closed, and this will be communicated [to] the deceased suspects’ victims.”
/file/attachments/orphans/ED_572639_912858.jpg "Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)")
While this means cases against dead suspects are officially dealt with on police systems, it is what concerns some policing sources – that cases may be viewed as solved when a suspect has died before going on trial and being found guilty.
Mathe told Daily Maverick that if any SAPS officer was worried about a policing matter, they could raise this within the organisation.
Crime statistics and inquests
Daily Maverick has established that the national instruction has indeed caused concerns because some individuals linked to policing strongly believe that accountability ceases at death, so a dead person should not, and technically cannot, be criminally charged.
They are also worried that carrying out the instruction may inflate certain crime statistics and create a skewed impression of police pro-activity. (Killed suspects could be criminally charged for matters in which, had they survived a shootout with police, they could subsequently have been acquitted.)
Other concerns include that the instruction can be used to justify killings that have nothing to do with self-defence. In other words, to conceal police misconduct or negligence.
Guy Lamb, a crime and policing expert at Stellenbosch University, told Daily Maverick this week that shooting cases involving police officers were usually registered as inquests so that it could be determined whether the wounded or killed individual “actually was trying to perpetrate a crime”.
“So, from an inquest point of view, often the crime stats don’t take that into account.”
Clear-cut murder and attempted murder cases were recorded in the statistics.
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate, according to the act governing it, probes “deaths as a result of police actions”.
‘Sounds like a hoax’
This week, when Daily Maverick told criminal defence attorney William Booth about the instruction and the police’s explanation, he said: “This surely is a hoax. Surely you cannot charge a dead person criminally at all?”
Booth said every individual had a right to be warned about being charged and to defend themself.
He added that if the instruction did indeed exist (as Mathe’s response to Daily Maverick suggests), it was “ludicrous”.
Booth, like Lamb, said that if someone was killed in a shootout with police, an inquest into that could be held.
Another lawyer, Labiek Samuels, was outspoken about the national instruction and the police’s explanation for it.
‘Illogical and preposterous’
“According to my understanding... It’s illogical and preposterous for the simple reason that if a person is charged, his rights are read to him,” Samuels said.
If the November instruction were applied, and according to Samuels’s interpretation, it would mean that rights would have to be read to a corpse, which would have to acknowledge and sign that this had been done.
He was of the opinion that a dead person cannot be arrested and therefore cannot be charged.
The instruction and Mathe’s statement about it have sparked several other questions, including whether a case or cases against a suspect killed in a self-defence shootout with police or a civilian should be “regarded as solved and closed” (as Mathe has said), or viewed as “undetected”.
Based on court cases in which an accused has been murdered (not in self-defence shootings or because of police reaction), trials continue without them.
Cases against those murdered accused are withdrawn, or their names are removed from indictments, which suggests they are no longer charged.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/ED_168516.jpg "Police and forensic investigators at the scene where Nicolaas Heerschap was shot and killed by alleged hitmen at Melkbosstrand on 9 July 2019. (Photo: Gallo Images / Network24 / Jaco Marais)")
Suspects killed
In terms of skirmishes between police officers and suspects, there are often reports of individuals on both sides being killed in shootouts.
Last month, for example, three suspects were killed in the Eastern Cape town of Tlokoeng.
A police statement at the time said officers were following up after a shooting had been reported.
“The police reportedly spotted the suspects in a vehicle,” it said.
#sapsEC #SAPS has opened an investigation following a shootout between police and suspected criminals in the Tlokoeng CBD on 22/02, which left three suspects fatally wounded.
— SA Police Service 🇿🇦 (@SAPoliceService) February 23, 2026
Preliminary reports indicate that the NIU members were on duty in Tlokoeng, following up on intelligence… pic.twitter.com/O2JUarztSM
“As they approached, the suspects opened fire, leading to a shootout. All three male suspects sustained fatal gunshot wounds and were declared dead on the scene.”
This statement described the overall incident as “a shootout between police and suspected criminals”.
If the November instruction is applied to this, the three dead suspects should face criminal charges for shooting at the police officers who were pursuing them, as well as for the preceding shooting they might have been involved in, and any other cases they faced. DM