Statement on NPA Conviction Rates

The NPA told Parliament that its conviction rates remain high – most, above 90 percent, which sounds impressive. What it did not say, is that the number of cases the NPA prosecutes all the way to verdict has collapsed over the past two decades — from 300 000 cases in 2004/5 to just 170 000 in 2024/25. The NPA’s reporting to Parliament is built around conviction rates, which are calculated on cases prosecuted to verdict, not on cases that were initially enrolled in court. Because of this, conviction rates tell you nothing about the hundreds of thousands of cases that never get to verdict – that are withdrawn, or struck off, or are closed because the accused stops coming to court after multiple postponements – these categories are the fate of the majority of enrolled cases. Serious commercial crime convictions have fallen to particularly low levels. South Africans are being given a number that looks impressive while the underlying system is in serious decline. We are surprised the NPA is still using these misleading metrics, which continue to incentivise the failure to prosecute, so prominently.  

Issued by the Prosecutions Project 28 April 2026.