Cape Town Mayor calls for end to delay in more policing powers for City police
22 January 2026
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia can no longer delay granting more policing powers for City police to help SAPS up conviction rates for gang, gun and drug crime. This follows the Acting Minister’s reported public admission on Wednesday that he ‘does not believe [SAPS] are currently able to defeat gangs’ who are on a ‘killing spree in the Western Cape’.
‘Minister Cachalia openly admits that SAPS do not have the resources to win the fight against gang crime. It is now impossible for him to delay any further in responding to Cape Town’s proposal for City metro police to help SAPS in investigating gun, gang and drug crimes. We’ve written the regulations for him to sign, but they're gathering dust on his desk.
‘Given his alarming comments, we call on the Minister to end the delay in granting more policing powers for our City officers to investigate crime. City police are immediately ready to build prosecution-ready case dockets to secure more convictions for gang, gun, and drug crime.
‘In fact, our officers are already supporting SAPS efforts by taking more than 450 guns off the streets per year, but the conviction rate is just 5% in these cases due to the broken criminal justice system and under-resourced SAPS and NPA.
‘The Acting Police Minister has the power to change this situation in various ways. That includes urgent resourcing of SAPS and, most immediately, expanding the draft municipal policing power regulations issued by his department for public comment as far back as June last year. I have asked for an urgent meeting with the Acting Minister to understand how we can now bring an end to the delays in expanding our City policing powers,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis.
The City’s full submission on expanding draft regulations for municipal policing powers, published by the National Police Minister, can be viewed here.
‘The most recent murder data – and particularly gang-related deaths – is an urgent call to action. The City can no longer wait on national government to adequately resource SAPS or address the massive shortage in detectives or backlogs in forensics - we simply have to step up and help do these things if we are to achieve the change we urgently need. For that we need national government to expand our policing powers, and take the necessary further steps to bring the chaos and carnage under control. I 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 Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, Alderman JP Smith.
The City previously released data showing how its policing resources are increasingly overtaking those of SAPS. The City added 1 263 new officers to the streets from 2021 to 2025 – a 48% growth in personnel - while SAPS dropped by an estimated 1 300 officers (15% decline) over the same period. There are also around 560 more City policing vehicles now on the roads compared to SAPS, based on the City’s 2025 fleet data.
A recent parliamentary reply shows that SAPS vacancy rates range from 20-40% across most Cape Town precincts, including 200 vacant SAPS detective posts as of August 2025.
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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
