Western Cape Policing: You are dead wrong Minister Cele

23 Jan 2019 in News

The Minister of Police has misled the residents of Bonteheuwel today. It was not his first time. Today he told an untruth when, according to the media, he claimed that “there are more policing resources in the Cape metro than in any other region in SA.”

The latest available police to population ratio for the area surrounding Bonteheuwel is about 442 people for every one police officer. Nationally, the SAPS have 1 police officer for every 375 people – according to the Minister himself the ideal ratio is about 1 police officer for every 220 people.

The under-resourcing of Bonteheuwel and its surrounds is part of a bigger trend for the Cape Town Metro and the Western Cape Province. According to the statistics supplied by SAPS to the Provincial Standing Committee on Community Safety, the police to population ration in the Western Cape stood at more than 560 people for every one police officer in 2018. The statistics also showed that national government had permitted the number of SAPS officer in the Western Cape to drop by 4502 over the past 4 years.

This is a disgrace and means that national government has set this province up for failure and has betrayed its people – they carry the responsibility for the blood of the more than 5000 people who have died at the hands of gang violence over the last decade.

Even the hasty re-establishment before the elections of the Anti-Gang Unit exposes the terrible truth that national government disestablished the organised crime and gang units in 2002 and refused to reinstate them despite calls for their return over the last decade by the City and Provincial government. Even now when they were finally reinstated it was simply accomplished by populating them with staff from the various police stations across the City, thereby further depleting the staff capacity of some of these already under-resourced police stations.

To be clear, Nationally there is on average 1 police officer for every 375 people, despite the fact that the national minister himself says there should be 1 police officer for every 220 people. In the Western Cape, there is 1 police officer for every 560 people. The statement by Minister Cele is therefore not true and is a deliberate attempt at distorting the truth about why this province is experiencing a crime and gang violence epidemic and who is responsible for it.

When the Hawks established their Narcotics Enforcement Bureau in 2017, they assigned only 9 officers to the Western Cape, where more than 36% of the country’s drug crime are reported. By comparison, Gauteng received 24 and Kwa-Zulu Natal 25. By late 2017 Western Cape still languished behind with only 9 officers while the number in Gauteng was bumped up to 34 officers.

In terms of the Constitution, policing is the responsibility of the national government. The ANC government has failed the people of Cape Town and the Western Cape spectacularly in this regard. The City has had to step into the breach deploy extra policing staff to take up the slack and perform policing functions being neglected by national government, such as rail commuter safety, liquor enforcement, gang enforcement and marine resource protection (anti-poaching).

The City will continue to put resources towards trying to make these communities safer. Mayor Dan Plato has committed to R100 million rand extra policing staff a year for the next 3 years which will allow us to triple the Metro Police and make huge gains towards improving safety in Cape Town’s most challenged communities.