The week that was in charts.
🎲 Bad bets
Statistics South Africa’s latest survey on the personal services industry shows a disturbing trend: the extraordinary growth in income from gambling services.
The personal services industry includes the education, health, entertainment and recreation sectors. Five years ago, in 2018, services in health and education generated about 70% of the income in the personal services industry. That decreased to 56% in 2023.
The results of the latest survey, conducted in 2023, show that recreational, cultural and sporting activities (the category that includes betting and gambling services) generated 37% of the total income generated by the personal services industry, which was estimated at R688-billion.
The bubbles in the chart above show the services in the sporting and other recreational activities category only (ie, not cultural). The total income for this category is estimated at R209-billion in 2023. The gambling and betting services, which are in shades of green, grew from a combined income of R25-billion in 2018 to R191-billion in 2023.
For more read StatsSA’s data story Appetite for gambling and betting grows.
💳 Going digital
Cash is still king in South Africa, according to the South African Reserve Bank, irrespective of what people buy. However, the instant electronic payment service, PayShap, is working on changing that.
In its first month of launching in March 2023, 36,631 payments were processed through the PayShap service. By August 2025, that figure had climbed to 44.8-million transactions a month. The rise is partly due to the number of participating banks using the PayShap service which rose from an initial cohort of 4 to 13 in 2025.
The service, developed by PayInc (formerly BankservAfrica), in collaboration with the Payments Association of South Africa, PwC and other industry stakeholders, allows businesses and individuals to send and receive digital payments instantaneously using a unique proxy, called a ShapID, typically the receiver’s cellphone number, without the need for costly banking infrastructure.
“This growth reflects the clear demand for instant, real-time digital payments, further boosted by the migration of Real-Time Clearing transactions,” Anton van der Merwe, Head of PayShap at PayInc told The Outlier.
In just over two years, the service has processed more than 461-million transactions worth R403-billion and registered over 5-million ShapID proxies.
But PayShap won’t rest on its laurels. Van der Merwe says the adoption is likely to accelerate as PayShap expands to more banks and launches QR-initiated payments in 2026.
- Produced by The Outlier in partnership with Electrum, the next-generation payments software company, powering payments for banks and retailers.
🚨 Policing the police
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) is the police watchdog responsible for investigating police officers who break the law while on duty. But IPID has a massive backlog.
In 2023/24, IPID received 5,136 cases and finalised 4,669 investigations. But less than half of the finalised cases were from that year — most of them were from previous years. By the end of the year, IPID had a backlog of 19,055 cases actively under investigation.
When IPID finishes an investigation, it is referred to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for criminal prosecution and/or back to South African Police Services (SAPS) for disciplinary processes. About 2,400 were referred to SAPS and 2,000 to the NPA.
Low conviction rate
In 2023, only 84 criminal cases were concluded by the NPA with 43 ending in conviction. The rest ended in acquittal. SAPS finalised 404 disciplinary cases of which 254 ended in conviction and 150 in acquittal.
Most common offences
Assault is the most common offence reported to IPID, with 3,000 cases reported in 2023. This is followed by deaths as a result of police action (460) and rape by a police officer (110).
During the covid lockdowns in 2020, assault cases spiked, with 4,228 reported to IPID.
Of the police officers criminally convicted in 2023, 20 were for assault, 13 for deaths as a result of police action, and three for rape by a police officer.
In SAPS’s disciplinary processes, there were 127 convictions for assault, 22 for deaths as a result of police action, 18 for rape by a police officer, and eight for torture.
📚 Library books
With the Johannesburg City Library reopening in early August, we turned our attention to an important question: how many libraries are there in the city?
Books are a luxury, says independent publisher Zimkitha Zilo of Uhlanga Books. “In communities where households struggle with unemployment, food insecurity and lack of infrastructure, books are often the last item on the budget.”
This is especially concerning in a country where 80% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning, according to the 2021 PIRLS survey, which compares 57 countries.
If books are too expensive for most households, libraries should be there to fill the gap.
Johannesburg has 81 open public libraries that service around 5-million people. But these libraries are unevenly distributed. Half of them are situated in just three of the city’s nine regions (see chart above). Region D (which includes parts of Soweto), Region B (which includes Rosebank and Randburg) and Region E (which includes Bryanston, Sandton, Alexandra and Houghton) have 44 libraries.
Region A (which includes Midrand and Diepsloot) has only five public libraries for its 879,000 people and Region F (which extends from Bruma to Ormonde and suburbs south of Rosettenville) has nine.
So, while on paper, Johannesburg may have many libraries, whether you have access to one nearby depends heavily on where you live.
We also mapped all the city’s libraries. Take a look and see which one is nearest to you.
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