RISING BODY COUNT UNDERSCORES CAPE TOWN POLICING CRISIS

ONLINE EDITOR @KASIBC_AFRICA 

RISING BODY COUNT UNDERSCORES CAPE TOWN POLICING CRISIS

Unite for Change Leadership Council Member and GOOD Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament

1. HIGHEST CRIME AREAS HAVE FEW POLICE

2. BILLIONS SPENT ON CITY ‘KITSKOPS’ BEAR NO FRUIT

3. WESTERN CAPE HAS MOST VACANT DETECTIVE POSTS IN THE COUNTRY

The number of people killed in shooting incidents in Cape Town has spiralled since the launch of the Safer Festive Season operations last month, with 40 deaths, mostly gang-related, reported over the past two weekends.

The Safer Festive Season programme, a collaborative effort involving national police, provincial, and City resources, is intended to make communities safer during the tourist season. The principle cannot be faulted. But extra bobbies on the beat in the Waterfront and roadblocks in the Winelands won’t stop the plague of shootings because the violence is happening on the Cape Flats.

A large part of the problem is the politicisation of crime. Policing is a national competency overseen by an ANC Acting Minister, while the DA governments in the Western Cape and City of Cape Town continue to campaign for devolved policing powers. Both spheres have poured billions into creating their own “police” force, the Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) yet the quarterly crime statistics show no measurable improvement.

Last month, Western Cape MEC for Police Oversight and Community Safety, Anroux Marais, revealed in response to parliamentary questions that police stations in historically white suburbs remain better resourced than those in predominantly Black and Coloured communities.

For example:

Rondebosch: 1 police officer per 381 residents

Wynberg: 1 per 238 residents

Delft: 1 per 808 residents

Gugulethu: 1 per 962 residents

The overall Western Cape average is 1 police officer per 435 people. Both Delft and Gugulethu rank among the province’s top 10 murder precincts, yet they are the most under-resourced.

The Western Cape Government has invested billions of rands over the past three years, and plans to spend billions more, on LEAP. At its launch, LEAP promised to halve the number of murders in the top 10 murder precincts. Instead, the murder rate has increased.

According to Cape Town Mayco Member JP Smith, the City is deploying “136 officers to tourism hotspots, versus nearly 2,000 to gang and crime hotspot areas” this festive season. 

We will await the fourth-quarter crime statistics to assess whether this massive spend drawn from provincial funds that could support education and healthcare has any real impact. So far, LEAP’s effect has been indiscernible across the past eight quarterly crime reports.

In addition, LEAP has no formal basis in law, similar to the disbanded Amapanyaza unit in Gauteng. If collaboration between SAPS and LEAP is to be meaningful, LEAP must be regularised and brought into the formal legal framework.

Meanwhile, the policing union POPCRU recently revealed 2,344 vacant detective posts nationwide, with the Western Cape accounting for the largest shortage, 902 vacancies. Considering that Cape Town is South Africa’s murder and gang capital, this lack of qualified investigators is a national disgrace.

With political will, the redistribution of police resources to the most affected areas and the filling of vacant detective posts could be resolved quickly. But as we have seen for decades, when politicians exploit gang violence for populist, partisan purposes, the violence simply continues.

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