Viewfinder’s Police Accountability Tracker is an interface to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate's (IPID) database of more than 47,000 complaints registered against the police between April 2012 and March 2020. Users can use the filters to home in on any police station for an overview of cases registered there. Users can also locate any individual case for a "progress report", as at March 2020. The data demonstrates that police officers implicated in violent crimes routinely escape accountability.
Featured Content
A “massive reading campaign” for South African schools announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2019 has never got off the ground, despite triumphant claims in Parliament by the Department of Basic Education (DBE). Viewfinder and GroundUp can reveal that the Department’s National Reading Plan – which it had not made publicly available – is a
Read more
An international literacy study has confirmed that 81% of South Africa’s Grade 4 children could not read for meaning in any language in 2021, almost exactly the same proportion as in 2011. This means that a decade of slow progress in reading has been wiped out. The child literacy rate observed by the Progress on International
Read more
Teaching children to read is fundamental to their future success. But for a country already battling massive youth unemployment and an adult literacy crisis, it’s emerged that close to 80% of Grade 4 learners cannot read with understanding in any of the 11 official languages. Government has warned of the crisis and, in 2019, President
Read moreLatest from this investigation
In 2014, Glebelands block committee chairman Zinakile Fica died in police custody in Umlazi, KwaZulu-Natal. A forensic pathologist concluded that an old apartheid-era asphyxiation method called “tubing” was likely the cause of the heart attack he had suffered. To what extent do police still use this terrifying torture tactic today? A Viewfinder and Carte Blanche
Read More
Police arrest a protester at the Siqalo informal settlement near Mitchells Plain, Cape Town. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp) Police commanders will be empowered to overrule watchdog findings against their colleagues when a new agreement between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) takes effect. The draft agreement was
Read More
A South African Police Service (SAPS) no entry ribbon. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks) People killed while fleeing, while brandishing knives or when officers fire “warning” shots – these are some of the circumstances of killings by police examined in a new study on the use of lethal force by the South African Police Service (SAPS). International
Read More
The mother of a dead child has given Viewfinder access to the tapes of a disciplinary hearing of the police officer accused of killing her son. The officer was found not guilty, though the police watchdog had concluded he had a case of “murder” and “misconduct” to answer. The tapes reveal the inner workings of
Read More
