Spike in Gun Violence Against Police Casts Tragic Shadow Over Recovery of Missing SAPS Officers

South Africa is grappling with a disturbing surge in gun violence targeting law enforcement officers—an issue tragically underscored by the recent deaths of three police constables whose bodies were recovered from the Hennops River this week.

Since 1995, gun crime against South African Police Service (SAPS) officers has soared by over 400%, according to internal SAPS data and civil society research. In 1995, fewer than 50 police officers were fatally shot in the line of duty. Today, that figure regularly exceeds 100 annually, with officers facing increasingly militarized and coordinated criminal networks.

On Tuesday night, National Police Commissioner General Fannie Masemola confirmed that the bodies of Constables Keamogetswe Buys, Boipelo Senoge, and Cebekhulu Linda—who disappeared last Thursday—were among five corpses recovered from the river. All three had been identified by their families at the Tshwane mortuary.

“It has been a difficult six days for members of the SAPS and the affected families,” Masemola said during a media briefing. “We searched everywhere for our three missing police officers.”

The officers were last seen at a petrol station near the Grasmere Toll Plaza on the N1 in Gauteng, just hours before their phones and vehicle tracking systems were mysteriously disabled.

A multi-provincial investigation team combed Gauteng, the Free State, and Limpopo, eventually narrowing their search to an area along the N1 highway stretching past the Buccleuch interchange and onto John Vorster Drive in Centurion. The discovery of vehicle parts near the Hennops River led officers to a panel van and a grim scene.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am unfortunately not the bearer of good news this evening,” Masemola said. “We had hoped to find our three police officers safe, unharmed, and alive, but this is not the case.”

With assistance from SAPS drone units, cybercrime specialists, the Hawks, and airwing units from both Gauteng Traffic and Bidvest Protea Coin, search efforts recovered five bodies in total. Among them was an administrative clerk from the Lyttelton Police Station and another yet to be identified.

The violence that claimed the lives of Constables Buys, Senoge, and Linda is part of a broader, alarming trend. Police watchdogs have long warned that South Africa’s frontline officers are being targeted with impunity. Experts link the rise in police killings to growing access to illegal firearms, organized crime syndicates, and declining trust in state authority.

Masemola stressed the commitment of SAPS to hold those responsible to account: “These were not just officers—they were sons, daughters, protectors of their communities. This rise in brutal attacks on our police is a national crisis.”