The DA has appealed to finance minister Enoch Godongwana and the Treasury to create a new municipal grant so that metros with the required capacity can take control over local policing.
This comes on top of the DA’s drive for Cape Town to take control of local train services and the commitment by its mayoral candidate for the city Geordin Hill-Lewis that if the DA is re-elected to control the city in Monday’s local government elections it will seek greater independence from Eskom by relying more on independent power producers.
Hill-Lewis, who is also the DA’s national spokesperson on finance, said in a statement on Wednesday that the proposed new municipal grant should be financed out of the current VIP protection budget.
“The DA has consistently called for the R1.7bn VIP protection budget to be slashed by at least half. SA taxpayers are currently forced to spend R8m on bodyguards, weapons and equipment for each of the 209 so-called VIPs receiving personal protection,” Hill-Lewis said.
“Under my proposed plan, R1bn out of this R1.7bn will be completely devolved away from VIP protection into the hands of competent metros, so that we can protect residents rather than politicians without costing taxpayers a cent in additional taxes.”
According to Treasury figures, Cape Town is currently entitled to 14.4% of the total equitable share funding made available to SA’s eight metros by the national government. Using this as a basis, Hill-Lewis has asked the Treasury to begin transferring R144m annually of the R1bn redirected from the SAPS VIP protection budget to Cape Town so that it can launch a pilot project to take over more policing functions from SAPS.
Hill-Lewis said the R144m allocation could be used to establish Cape Town’s own forensic laboratory in a context where the government-run laboratories have a current backlog of almost 240,000 cases, which has caused long delays in the investigation of crimes; fund more boots on the ground; and conduct pilot research at individual police stations in a context where the power to determine budget priorities and reporting lines is moved from the national minister of police to the Cape Town city council.
The first step towards local control of policing was the launch in 2020 of the R1.5bn law enforcement advancement plan (LEAP), which is jointly funded and managed by the Western Cape provincial government and the city of Cape Town. It has so far deployed over 1,000 additional law enforcers.
“The DA makes no bones about it: the proposal we introduce today is part of our long-term vision to devolve policing to competent metros and provinces, so that the SA Police Service (SAPS) ultimately becomes the Cape Town Police Service (CTPS). Ours is a vision of the future where residents in need call on well-trained and equipped officers from their local CTPS who understand the needs of Capetonians and who have all the powers and funding they need to independently prevent, combat, investigate and solve crime,” Hill-Lewis said.
“The past 27 years have proven that SAPS, which is managed from 1,500km away in Pretoria under a rotating rogues’ gallery of the corrupt and the inept, simply does not have the capacity to keep Capetonians safe. Despite this, there are still many excellent and hardworking SAPS officers. They should be the first to take up new posts in the DA’s devolved metro-based and provincial policing plan that must ultimately become the CTPS.”
Hill-Lewis said it was clear that police minister Bheki Cele would never be able to bring peace to the people of Manenberg, Hanover Park, Philippi, Gugulethu and Grassy Park. Cape Town has the highest recorded rates of murder, robbery and nonviolent property-related crimes in the country.
“If we are to ever win the war against crime, we have to fundamentally change the way we do policing by devolving power and funding away from the failing national government,” he added.
The DA also wants to control passenger rail services with Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) subsidiary Metrorail being responsible for transport services while the Cape Town metro would maintain and operate the infrastructure.
Metrorail’s rail commuter services have been in a serious state of decline caused by decades of underinvestment, outdated technology, the loss of critical skills, deferred maintenance and corruption. This has resulted in 64% of residents that previously had access to passenger rail services having lost that.
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