Dear Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development,

SUMMARY

South Africa's Forensic Science Laboratory has a DNA processing backlog of 141,190 cases exceeding prescribed turnaround timelines as of December 2024, as confirmed by the DNA Oversight Board in its parliamentary report. Cases registered for analysis rose by over 118,000 in a single year, from 383,614 in 2023/24 to 502,407 in 2024/25, as confirmed by Police Minister Senzo Cachalia in parliamentary responses.

The KwaZulu-Natal laboratory has not functioned since flood damage in 2016. Despite a R250 million additional allocation in 2021 and R39.5 million spent on overtime across three financial years, the backlog has not cleared. The Public Protector's 2023 report identified financial mismanagement, failure to renew supplier contracts and procurement dysfunction as the primary causes.

This backlog is not a technical inconvenience. It is a justice failure with direct consequences for the prosecution of child rape, gender-based violence and murder. The NPA's 2023/24 Annual Report records 53,285 reported sexual offences in that year, of which 5,276 reached court and 3,813 resulted in conviction, a pre-prosecution attrition rate of 90.1%. Between April 2024 and January 2025, only 83 statutory rape cases were successfully prosecuted nationally, as confirmed in a Police Ministry parliamentary response reported by The Citizen on 11 March 2025. The DNA backlog is a documented contributing factor to case withdrawals and prosecution declinations at every stage of the justice pipeline.

This submission proposes a three-tier privatisation model for DNA forensic processing that would achieve a 50% improvement in processing turnaround time within 36 months while retaining full government ownership of the National Forensic DNA Database, government oversight of quality standards and government control of chain of custody protocols. The model draws on international experience in the United Kingdom, Australia and Scotland, incorporating the lessons of both their successes and their documented failures.

The estimated total cost of the proposed model over 36 months is R842 million to R1.19 billion. Private laboratory processing at commercial rates of R800 to R1,200 per sample means clearing the existing 140,000-case backlog through emergency private contract would cost R112 million to R168 million, a fraction of what has been spent failing to clear it through the public system. The ongoing annual contract cost of processing 502,407 samples at R800 per sample is R401 million, below the R570 million allocated to the Forensic Science Laboratory for 2025/26 under the current model.

The submission further proposes a dedicated Priority One classification for child sexual offence cases involving victims under 16, with a contractually binding 14-day processing turnaround and double penalty rates for non-compliance, in direct support of mandatory prosecution frameworks for statutory rape.

**Key Findings at a Glance**

141,190 DNA cases exceeding turnaround timelines as of December 2024, confirmed by DNA Oversight Board parliamentary report.
502,407 forensic cases registered in 2024/25, up 31% in one year, confirmed by parliamentary response.
KwaZulu-Natal forensic laboratory non-functional since 2016.
R39.5 million spent on overtime across three financial years without resolving the backlog.
Only 83 statutory rape prosecutions succeeded nationally in ten months, confirmed in parliamentary response.
90.1% pre-prosecution attrition rate for reported sexual offences, confirmed by NPA 2023/24 Annual Report.
Private processing costs R800 to R1,200 per sample against a failing public system costing R570 million annually.
50% turnaround improvement achievable within 36 months under conservative throughput modelling.

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**1. THE CURRENT CRISIS: A SYSTEM IN MEASURABLE FAILURE**

**1.1 Scale of the Backlog**

As of December 2024, the DNA Oversight Board reported to Parliament that 141,190 DNA case entries had exceeded their prescribed processing timeframes, surpassing the statutory target of maintaining backlogs below 10% of registered cases. This figure derives from the DNA Oversight Board established under the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Act 37 of 2013 and constitutes primary parliamentary record.

Registered forensic cases rose by 24.6% between 2021/22 and 2024/25, from 307,826 to 383,614 entries. By 2024/25, total registered cases had reached 502,407, an increase of over 118,000 in a single year, as confirmed by Police Minister Cachalia in parliamentary responses. Of the cases currently exceeding turnaround timelines, 28,701 are court-bound matters still in process, meaning active prosecutions are directly delayed by the processing failure.

The DNA Oversight Board identified infrastructure constraints as a primary contributing factor, noting that forensic science laboratories in the Western Cape and nationally are under severe pressure, wi