Calls in South Africa to integrate cameras and panic buttons — Daily Maverick
In Kempton Park, South Africa, after the body of 38-year-old Elizabeth Moselakgomo was found three days after she went missing, a Daily Maverick columnist called on Gauteng authorities to restore the surveillance network, link it to electronic panic buttons and introduce a rapid video-based search for missing women.
Moselakgomo left her home in the Rhodesfield area for a run on September 9 and did not return. Her eight-year-old daughter alerted relatives, who contacted the police. Law enforcement officers conducted searches and checked hospitals and morgues, but the woman’s body was found on September 12 behind a hotel near her home. Her family identified her at the Germiston morgue the following Monday.
Faulty cameras and repair costs
In a written response to the Gauteng Legislature, the provincial government said it had spent 124.5 million rand to install 960 surveillance cameras. At the same time, 89 sites were not operational, affecting 269 cameras. The Democratic Alliance said this meant that about 28% of the network was offline, but the relevant department called this interpretation misleading and said repair teams were fixing the faults.
Causes of the disruptions included vandalism, water damage to batteries and faulty inverters. Authorities estimate annual maintenance of the network at 12–15 million rand. The author proposes publishing an indicator of the cameras’ actual operational status so that residents can know whether a camera near them is working.
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System integration and a search protocol
The province has distributed more than 184,000 electronic panic buttons under its e-policing programme. After a button is pressed, a response service is dispatched to the person. The column also proposes displaying for the operator the camera located near the place where the alert was triggered.
The author notes that Gauteng has 960 cameras of its own, while Vumacam operates several thousand cameras in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, including with analytics and licence plate recognition. The provincial government has an agreement to access this private network. However, in the author’s assessment, there is no written protocol providing for an immediate coordinated review of footage after a report that an adult woman is missing and for private operators to provide recordings within hours rather than weeks.
According to the column, as of September 17, the bodies of nine murdered women had been found in Kempton Park and its surrounding areas since July 15. The author stresses that cameras record events but do not intervene directly, so their effectiveness requires control-room staff and transport for rapid response. In the author’s view, the use of facial recognition requires a clearly limited purpose, external oversight and compliance with data protection legislation.
