Crime remains the foremost issue for Capetonians. It is the daily backdrop to life in too many neighbourhoods. Gang shootings, children caught in the crossfire, small businesses extorted into financial ruin are, unfortunately, a routine experience for too many.
And the barrier to changing this reality is, remarkably, just two missing words in our law. As it stands, municipal police may “prevent” crime but not “investigate” it. Adding just two words (“and investigate”) would transform how effectively we can pursue criminals and secure convictions.
At present, the South African Police Service Act limits the functions of municipal police to three areas: traffic policing, the enforcement of by-laws and the prevention of crime. The law stops short at that last phrase. It does not allow municipal police officers to investigate crime. They can patrol, they can arrest, they can seize evidence, but they cannot open a docket, take a witness statement, investigate to find evidence needed for conviction or follow a case through to prosecution.
This unfortunate legislative drafting is a handbrake on justice. In Cape Town, city law enforcement are often the first responders at a crime scene. They arrive before South African Police Service (SAPS) officers, they arrest suspects with illegal guns, they secure crime scenes. But the moment evidence needs to be gathered – statements taken, ballistics tested, dockets built – they must step aside and wait for the SAPS. Too often, SAPS detectives do not arrive in time, or arrive overwhelmed with hundreds of other cases. Convictions consequently collapse before they even begin.
Cape Town city officers take roughly 400 illegal firearms off the streets every year. Yet the conviction rate in these cases hovers around 5%. That means that out of every 100 men caught with an illegal gun – most of whom are gang affiliates – 95 walk free. An appalling result. Why does this happen? Because dockets are incomplete, ballistics tests are delayed, witnesses are never interviewed and evidence falls through the cracks.
The case for a simple change
The legislative change the City of Cape Town seeks is almost embarrassingly straightforward: Amend section 64E(c) of the SAPS Act so that municipal police may do “the prevention and investigation of crime”. Just two words. That is all.
But this small amendment would have big consequences. It would allow capable municipalities like Cape Town to investigate priority crimes like gang violence, firearms offences, drug trafficking and extortion, where we already have capacity to do so. It would mean that when our officers seize a gun or respond to a shooting, they could immediately take statements, preserve evidence and prepare a docket fit for prosecution.
Critics sometimes say this would fragment policing. They are wrong. The City is not asking to replace the SAPS. Serious and organised crime, national security threats, cross-border syndicates – these will and must remain the responsibility of the SAPS. What we ask is to help shoulder the local investigative load, in the same way that cities across the democratic world do.
Germany, for example, entrusts policing to its Länder. In the US, municipal and county forces handle the bulk of criminal investigations. Closer to home, Kenya and Nigeria both practise devolved policing models. These systems aren’t perfect, but they are responsive. They recognise that crime is local – different in Chicago than in Houston, different in Munich than in Berlin, different in Bloemfontein and Bonteheuwel.
South Africa is the outlier, clinging to a centralised system that has plainly failed to meet the needs of diverse communities.
The collaboration already exists
This is not a call for secession or an attack on cooperative governance. On the contrary, Cape Town has signed a formal Cooperation Agreement with the SAPS and the Western Cape government. That agreement commits all parties to joint operations, shared intelligence and coordinated planning. We remain committed to it.
But agreements without powers are toothless. City officials sit in “joint workstreams”, only to be told by SAPS counterparts that they aren’t allowed to share any real-time crime data, to act on City-supplied intelligence or to integrate systems. Months of goodwill are squandered because national legislation prohibits municipal police from sharing the investigative load, along with the unwillingness of the SAPS to share crime intelligence which prohibits meaningful cooperation.
The irony is painful: the SAPS themselves are overstretched and underresourced. Detectives carry caseloads so unmanageable that many investigations are doomed before they start. And yet when the City offers trained investigators, forensic tools, drones, bodycams, gunshot detection systems and more than 1,000 law enforcement officers on the front lines, the law prevents us from using them fully.
Some will argue that municipal police could be misused politically, or that corruption risks are too high. But corruption thrives in centralised, opaque bureaucracies, not in systems with multiple points of accountability. Devolution is not a panacea, but it makes law enforcement more answerable to local communities. Cape Town already operates under civilian oversight, Ipid scrutiny and full transparency to council.
A stronger, more capable SAPS must focus on syndicates, trafficking networks and cross-border operations while municipalities take responsibility for burglaries, assaults, extortion cases and illegal firearms in our own backyards.
The truth is that South Africa’s one-size-fits-all model is no longer credible nor is it keeping South Africans safe.
The urgency
Every delay in making this change comes at a cost measured in lives. Children on the Cape Flats grow up learning to duck when they hear gunfire. Mothers pray their sons will not be pulled into gangs. Small shopkeepers quietly factor extortion into their business plans. This is not the South Africa promised in our Constitution nor is it the South Africa we can be.
Cape Town has shown what is possible with limited powers. Since 2021 we, along with our colleagues in the provincial government, have deployed more than 1,200 LEAP officers in hotspot areas, added more than 1,100 new uniformed officers and invested nearly R800-million in safety technology like drones, CCTV, automated licence plate recognition and a citywide command-and-control system. These efforts have saved lives, but without investigative powers they cannot deliver justice.
Justice requires follow-through. Arresting a criminal is only half the job. Securing a conviction is the other half. Our officers must be able to take witness statements, conduct forensic tests and hand over watertight dockets to prosecutors. Otherwise, all we achieve is a revolving door of arrests and releases.
A call for change
No law change will magically fix policing. Corruption, resources, training – all of these matter. But right now, even when we do the basics right, the law forces us to stop halfway.
South Africans are entitled to a policing system that works, not one that clings to outdated centralisation. But most importantly we are not calling for the impossible. We are asking for the addition of two simple words that could make all the difference in the fight against crime.
Every day we delay, criminals write their own law on our streets. The Constitution promised safety and dignity. At the very least, we should allow those closest to the problem to try to deliver this. DM