Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has renewed his calls on President Cyril Ramaphosa to devolve more policing powers for City police to investigate gang, gun, and drug crime. This comes ahead of the 2026 State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday.
The Mayor further called on the president to end delays in granting additional policing powers to City police to help the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) increase conviction rates for illegal firearms, drugs, and gang violence cases.
“There is so much preventable suffering in our gang-impacted communities due to extremely low conviction rates for illegal firearm, drug, and gang-related cases.”
Hill-Lewis added that while the Acting Police Minister, Firoz Cachalia, openly admitted that the SAPS does not have the resources to defeat gangs, City officers are ready to help SAPS by building prosecution-ready case dockets to increase convictions.
According to the City, its officers already remove over 450 illegal guns off the streets per year, but the conviction rates are reportedly just 5% in these cases due to what it calls the “broken criminal justice system and under-resourced SAPS and NPA”.
“The President and Acting Police Minister have the power to change this situation in various ways. That includes urgent resourcing of SAPS and, most immediately, devolving criminal investigative powers to well-trained City police via the necessary statutory reforms.” added Hill-Lewis
The mayor added that the City has been unable to secure an urgent follow-up meeting with the Acting Police Minister Cachalia despite his presence in Cape Town for SONA this week.
This comes after the City submitted draft regulations for more policing powers as part of a public participation process last year.
The City’s full submission on expanding draft regulations for municipal policing powers, published by the National Police Minister, can be viewed here: https://bit.ly/4oGBvrk
“Just recently, Acting Minister Cachalia supported the devolution of policing powers for Gauteng crime wardens, but yet we cannot get clear timelines from him on investigative powers for our well-trained and well-resourced City police,” added Hill-Lewis
Meanwhile, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, JP Smith, says the City can no longer wait on the national government to adequately resource SAPS or address the massive shortage in detectives or backlogs in forensics.
“- we simply have to be allowed to step in and help do these things if we are to achieve the change we need. We stand with our communities who are under siege in demanding urgent action and not merely more delays in decision making while our communities suffer,” said Smith.
