Illustrative image: Western Cape Premier Alan Winde has released a three-year-old report into a 2022 High Court judgment that said there was sufficient evidence to suggest that gangs had infiltrated the police service in the Western Cape. The province is the site of continued deadly gang conflicts, earning it the reputation as South Africa’s gang capital. (Photos: Ziyaad Douglas / Gallo Images | Esa Alexander / The Times / Gallo Images | Jaco Marais / Die Burger /Gallo Images | Brenton Geach / Gallo Images)
Western Cape Premier Alan Winde was recently pressured into releasing a report – albeit slightly redacted – on a critical 2022 court judgment that said evidence suggested members of the 28 gang had infiltrated the province’s police management.
Gang shootings plague the Western Cape, underscoring the seriousness of the judgment. In reaction to the judgment, Winde lodged a complaint with the Western Cape Police Ombudsman, who investigated the matter and produced a report.
Facing mounting pressure, Winde publicly released this report on Thursday, 13 November 2025, three years after it was finalised.
It says the South African Police Service (SAPS) and National Prosecuting Authority viewed issues it focused on as sub judice – before a court and not for the public – therefore, no statements or copies of dockets could be obtained for the investigation that Winde ultimately started.
Despite no access to those documents, the report found: “The complaint of unacceptable behaviour against the provincial commissioner and his senior management is found to be substantiated on a balance of probabilities.”
Narrow pressure
This suggests there are police officers who need to be held to account. The 2022 court judgment that sparked Winde’s complaint leading to the ombudsman report pointed to the same thing.
And this means that recent pressure on Winde to release the report was perhaps too narrow, because the same pressure has not been applied to the SAPS, where the root of the problem is, or the cop watchdog, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid).
📺 Watch Premier Alan Winde tackle the Western Cape’s scourge of gang violence and the infiltration of gangs within SAPS.
The DA’s fight for better police, safer communities, more SAPS resources, and decentralised policing powers continues! pic.twitter.com/3NAp5Ye2l7
— Democratic Alliance (@Our_DA) November 13, 2025
One reason could be that the SAPS and Ipid have not yet produced reports, even interim ones. We would not know because they do not tell us.
When tabling the ombudsman report last week, Winde said he was complying with a recommendation that he wait for the police and Ipid to conclude parallel investigations before he decides what to do next.
But he added: “The delays we have faced in this process have become unacceptable and can no longer be tolerated.
“We are now publicly demanding action and answers from Ipid and the SAPS.”
‘28s gang infiltration’
This whole scandal hinges on a judgment from the Western Cape High Court by Judge Daniel Thulare, relating to a gang case involving crimes, including several murders, that was delivered on 17 October 2022.
A section of Thulare’s judgment says: “The evidence suggests that the senior management of the SAPS in the province has been penetrated to the extent that the 28 gang has access to the table where the Provincial Commissioner of the SAPS in the Western Cape sits with his senior managers and lead[s] them in the study of crime, develop[s] crime prevention strategies and decide[s] on tactics and approach to the safety and security of inhabitants of the Western Cape.
“This includes penetration of and access to the sanctity of the reports by specialised units like the Anti-Gang Unit and Crime Intelligence, to the Provincial Commissioner.”
Read more: 28s gang ‘capture’ top Western Cape cops, prosecutors’ lives at risk – judge sounds corruption alarm
It added that prosecutors’ lives were at risk.
Daily Maverick was the first to report on this judgment days after it was handed down in 2022.
On 27 October 2022, the day after that initial article was published, the Western Cape Police Ombudsman, Oswald Reddy, received Winde’s complaint relating to Thulare’s findings.
This led to the ombudsman investigation, and Winde received the report on it the following month, November 2022.
He did not release it to the public.
The apparent reason related to safety issues, which is why Winde released a redacted version of the report last week, with certain names omitted.
Read more: Cape Town’s cop-gang collusion case is still with police watchdog as mass shootings persist
Daily Maverick previously followed up on this matter to find out whether police officers were going to be held to account over Thulare’s judgment.
In 2023, police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe told Daily Maverick that the National Police Commissioner, General Fannie Masemola, had studied a report – it is not clear if this was the ombudsman one – on the judgment.
And in November last year, Ipid said it had registered a corruption investigation (Winde said last week that this investigation only started in October 2024 – two years after Thulare’s judgment).
Not much else was put to the public.
Renewed focus
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ED_537388.jpg "Judge Daniel Thulare. (Photo: Jaco Marais / Die Burger / Gallo Images)")
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ED_583435.jpg "Former police minister Bheki Cele. (Photo: Brenton Geach / Gallo Images)")
Thulare’s judgment received renewed attention recently because of former police minister Bheki Cele and his testimony at Parliament’s ad hoc committee.
The committee is investigating accusations, initially made earlier this year by KwaZulu-Natal police boss Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, that a drug-trafficking cartel has infiltrated South Africa’s law enforcement and politics.
Testifying at the ad hoc committee last month, Cele referenced Thulare’s 2022 judgment, saying: “General Mkhwanazi is not the first one to make this allegation.”
Read more: Cele tells Parliament of Beverly Hills Hotel meeting with ‘Cat’ Matlala, who he ‘knew very well’
Cele was essentially saying that Thulare, three years before Mkhwanazi, had alleged roughly the same thing – that criminals had infiltrated policing.
Media reports subsequently surfaced about Winde’s holding back of the ombudsman report into Thulare’s judgment, quoting anti-crime activists demanding the report’s release.
The Cape Times especially focused on this issue, with one of its news reports saying that the Cape Crime Crisis Coalition “expressed outrage over the ‘continued suppression’ of the report, questioning whether Winde was playing politics with people’s lives.”
That news article added: “The organisation has not ruled out taking legal action against Winde should he fail to release the report.”
Some politicians were also of the view that Winde was suppressing the report and needed to release it.
This all appears to have pressured Winde into tabling the ombudsman’s report last Thursday.
It turns out that Thulare’s 2022 judgment contains much more granular allegations and details than the jargon-dense report. (The Good party’s Brett Herron said the report “contains nothing that wasn’t already in the public domain”.)
Expand pressure for accountability
Now, the intention is not to take sides here, or to portray Winde as a victim or victor.
Anti-crime activists, politicians and others are well within their rights to demand the release of a report from a public representative.
However, the focus of the pressure on only Winde for the release of the report did not take into account what the SAPS and Ipid were doing (or not doing) about Thulare’s judgment.
Their action is not reliant on Winde or the ombudsman report.
And, just as Winde had the report for three years, so too did the police service and Ipid have access to Thulare’s judgment.
Pressure for action relating to the judgment should, therefore, be expanded from only Winde to include the SAPS and Ipid, otherwise it runs the risk of being seen as a political manoeuvre.
Issues relating to policing in the Western Cape often become political.
Through that lens, Winde is a DA politician while the SAPS is widely viewed as an ANC remit.
‘Extent of infiltration’
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ED_563626.jpg "Western Cape Police Commissioner Thembisile Patekile. (Photo: Jaco Marais / Die Burger /Gallo Images)")
On Friday, 14 November, the Western Cape police issued a statement saying the Provincial Commissioner, Thembisile Patekile, had cooperated with the ombudsman for the 2022 report. (Winde last week pointed out that the infiltration allegations stemmed from before Patekile’s time as the province’s police boss.)
“The matter was further subjected to national-level review and investigation,” the police said.
“With […] renewed public attention, SAPS re-commits to working with all oversight and investigative bodies to ensure that any possible wrongdoing is examined, accountability is upheld, and the integrity of policing in the Western Cape is protected.”
As for Ipid, Daily Maverick on Friday asked what has since happened with Thulare’s judgment.
Ipid spokesperson Lizzy Suping replied: “The Ipid investigation is ongoing, and the focus is to establish the extent of the infiltration.”
This implies that it has been proven that gangsters infiltrated the police in the Western Cape – as Thulare’s 2022 judgment suggested – and it is now for investigators to determine how far that went.
Meanwhile, even though the Western Cape police have vowed to uphold accountability, it is still not clear if any specific police officers have, or will be, held to task.
Pressure on the entities meant to be protecting us, in this case the police and Ipid, may produce those answers.
Beyond all this, gang shootings are still claiming lives across the Western Cape, reinforcing its title of South Africa’s gangsterism capital. DM