Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has warned that the city was considering applying to court to get investigative policing powers devolved from the national government to city officers because there had been no formal response to its applications to various successive police ministers.
He is convinced that granting these powers would result in better prosecutorial outcomes.
“I think we could make a really meaningful difference. We think delegating those powers downwards is essential for crime fighting,” Hill-Lewis said in an interview with Centre for Development and Enterprise executive director Ann Bernstein on Monday evening.
“The reality is that we have had three ministers in the last three years. The first minister was absolutely hostile to this, the second minister was kind of a lot warmer and friendlier but then got fired and the third minister is by far the warmest of them all to the idea but has only been there for five minutes,” Hill-Lewis said.
“So each time you have to start this conversation again and convince them of the merits. At some point you have to draw a line and say we have been talking about this for three years now, there is no improvement in these conviction rates — if anything, in the last six months we have had an escalation of gang violence in Cape Town — and we must now act.
“You must either agree to this or not and if you don’t we can challenge that but we need an answer one way or another. I think we are getting very close to that point [a legal challenge] now.”
At some point you have to draw a line and say we have been talking about this for three years now, there is no improvement in these conviction rates — if anything, in the last six months we have had an escalation of gang violence in Cape Town — and we must now act.
— Geordin Hill-Lewis
Cape Town mayor
Meanwhile the mayor said he was not in favour of suppressing online property rental agent Airbnb which has been blamed for the sharp escalation of rentals in the CBD.
He did not believe Cape Town should follow the example of Barcelona, which plans to phase out 10,000 short-term tourist apartments by 2028 after protests by residents.
He said comparisons with Barcelona were not justified as Barcelona received about 20-million overseas visitors a year and had an unemployment rate of 7% while Cape Town welcomed about 1.5-million overseas visitors each year and had an unemployment rate of 21%.
“Tourism in SA and Cape Town is one of the only parts of our national economy that is growing fast. Tourism in Cape Town is growing at an annual rate of 7% and we must encourage it and nurture it and help it to grow even more.”
He also pointed out that the tourists would have to be accommodated in some way either with Airbnb or in hotels, and if Airbnb was removed more hotels would have to be built, limiting the number of rental properties. So there would be no net gain of available space.
The primary priority had to be to create jobs, and tourism played a vital role in this. He welcomed the drive by the department of home affairs to ease the process of obtaining visas, especially for Chinese tourists.
Hill-Lewis also rejected the suggestion that while the DA opposed cadre deployment by the ANC, it practised it itself where it was in power. He said that the primary criteria was competence.
“We do not appoint on the basis of political loyalty,” Hill-Lewis said.
Cape Town is the only one of SA’s eight metros to receive a clean audit outcome for the past three years.
Hill Lewis stressed the importance of investing in Cape Town’s infrastructure, particularly in low income areas, noting that the infrastructure investment budget this year was triple that of four years ago and the city was spending more on infrastructure than Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni combined.
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