Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has asked police minister Bheki Cele for metropolitan police officers to be given full crime-fighting powers, as the city seeks to tackle lawlessness.
Cape Town is racked by gang violence and features prominently in the quarterly crime statistics released by Cele. Cape Town central police station was top of the list of the 30 police stations recording the highest number of serious crimes in the first quarter of 2022. The station recorded 2,653 serious crimes from January to March — an increase of 54.2% on 2021 figures.
The city has already requested control of the metro rail network from the state owned Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa). Finance minister Enoch Godongwana has given his support for a feasibility study on the municipality managing the ailing metropolitan rail service, and the first progress report expected in the next few weeks.
The Cape Town city council is also working to cut the city’s dependence on Eskom as far as possible and reduce the risk of power cuts by investing in renewable energy and procuring additional power from independent producers.
In a speech at a metropolitan council meeting Thursday Hill-Lewis said that having full policing powers would allow Cape Town's metropolitan police officers to investigate crimes. He rejected Cele’s that devolution of police powers would require an amendment to the constitution, noting that a minister may assign any function to a municipal council.
“We want our own, fully-fledged city police force with all the powers it needs to drastically reduce crime in Cape Town. And if the minister is not prepared to give us the powers we seek, we will fight tooth and nail to get them,” he said. “We are a capable government, and we are capable of achieving much more if the national government devolves more power to us.”
He said Cape Town’s metro police officers were mainly limited to crime prevention with limited scope for criminal investigations.
“By going beyond crime prevention, we could be doing so much more to help the SAPS build prosecution-ready case dockets. Instead, our officers have to rely on an overwhelmed and under-resourced SAPS that, frankly, does not have the capacity to investigate crime properly.
“A recent study found that 48% of SAPS detectives in the Western Cape have a caseload of over 200 dockets per officer. This is 333% above the norm. This problem is compounded by the current shortage of more than 500 SAPS detectives in the province.”
Hill-Lewis said that the city had deployed 1,100 new officers in communities affected by high crime rates.
“Our local law enforcement has more than tripled its arrest rate in recent years due to increased city and provincial government investment, with 50% of these arrests being drug-related. Of the 12 murder hotspots where Leap [the law enforcement advancement programme] officers have been deployed, four of them no longer feature among the top 30 murder hotspots in the country,” he said.
“As a result of these interventions, violent crime in Cape Town is now decreasing in some of the most crime-affected areas of our city. And we intend to keep up the momentum by training and deploying more officers to the areas that need it most.”
Hill-Lewis said the Cape Town metro council had a R5.4bn safety budget this year, with funding for 230 more officers and auxiliaries planned. The deployment of 100 law enforcement officers to the Cape Town CBD was also in the offing to provide a 24-hour policing presence there.
“The simple truth is that, if you surrender the CBD to criminal elements, you kill investment, growth and jobs,” the mayor said.
An 80-officer strong facility protection unit to protect key municipal buildings from vandalism, and city staff from violent attacks was also planned. Technology would also be used to enhance law enforcement and neighbourhood watches would be equipped and expanded.
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