I have taken note of Martin van Staden’s recent article, Cape Town, don’t plead for police powers – just get on with it, on the City of Cape Town’s continued push for the expansion of policing powers to municipal enforcement, also referred to as the devolution of policing powers.
His piece raises important issues about the urgency of addressing crime and the limits of the current policing model.
While I share his frustration with the failures of the South African Police Service, I differ with him on the practicality and legality of the approach he proposes.
Where I do agree with Martin is on the principle that Cape Town cannot simply wait for the ANC to act. That is exactly why the City has forged ahead with the Safety and Security Investigation Unit (SSIU), the Safety and Security Information Management Services (SSIMS), built our own computer-aided dispatch and data management system called EPIC, and invested in crime prevention technologies that allow us to police more effectively and gather crime-related data through the use of ShotSpotter, CCTV, dashcams and body cams.
And these are not paper exercises. These interventions have led to thousands of arrests, ensured numerous successful convictions, assisted in the arrest of criminals linked to extortion syndicates, exposed internal corruption, and led to the blacklisting of gang-related proxy companies. In this respect, the City has not waited; it has acted.
But there are limits. Our enforcement agencies can collect intelligence, gather evidence, and prepare the building blocks of a docket, but the National Prosecuting Authority will not treat a Metro Police file as a criminal docket unless the law is amended. And in many cases, we are at the mercy of overworked and under-resourced SAPS detectives to push City-initiated cases through the criminal justice system.
These are the bottlenecks that we need to fix through legislative framework changes.
And until then, we cannot run full criminal investigations or establish our own forensic laboratories without risking legal invalidity.
The Constitutional Court has been clear: no organ of state may exercise functions not conferred by law. Proposals that rely on the “doctrine of necessity” or implied powers are flawed. Necessity is a criminal defence, not an administrative law principle. To act beyond our powers would invite litigation, adverse audit findings, and undermine the very safety we seek to enhance.
Policing every street corner requires thousands of officers, vehicles, and permanent salaries that cannot be conjured from thin air. Yet the City has been leading the charge in municipal enforcement for the past decade through LEAP, Metro Police and Traffic enforcement.
Our officials have made over 2,000 arrests for the possession of illegal firearms since 2021, LEAP alone took 5,000 rounds of ammunition off the streets in the past year, potentially saving thousands of lives. And our camera network led to 946 arrests while the Police continue to underutilise it as a valuable tool in the fight against crime.
The results are not perfect, but they are a world apart from the collapse of basic law enforcement in many ANC-run metros, where even rudimentary by-law enforcement is non-existent.
“Just do it” can be a rallying cry but governance is about budgets, laws, institutions, and trade-offs. If Cape Town were to act unilaterally and outside the law, we would run into lawsuits, expensive court battles or even prosecution as threatened by National Government in the past.
The responsible path forward is to keep pushing boundaries but in ways that stand up in court, pass audit scrutiny, and deliver convictions.
Martin is right to challenge us not to wait on SAPS, and the City has not done so. But where his proposal falls short is in offering a workable solution.
Cape Town will continue building its investigative and enforcement capacity while fighting for the legislative reforms that will allow us to go further.
As the City, we are not campaigning to manage the SAPS or replace them; we only want to play a bigger and more meaningful support role in the fight against crime.
That is how we will deliver the safer communities our residents demand and deserve.
[Image: Brent Ninaber on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend