Mayor calls for urgent solution to SAPS Anti-Gang Unit resource crisis

24 August 2025

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says the City has called on Acting National Police Minister Prof Firoz Cachalia to urgently direct emergency resources to the South African Police Services (SAPS) Anti-Gang Unit, which faces an extreme lack of vehicles, firearms and even bulletproof vests, according to reports today. Read more below:  

‘I am gravely concerned by reports that the SAPS Anti-Gang Unit has just five working vehicles and a shortage of bulletproof vests and firearms, with officers who submit their guns for ballistics forced to go unarmed due to no additional stock. I call on the Acting Police Minister to urgently direct resources to this unit given the ongoing gang violence plaguing our city’s most vulnerable communities.

‘A big part of the solution is to allow the City’s growing policing resources to fully join SAPS in the fight against gang, gun, and drug crime. We are encouraged by the Acting Minister’s recent public commitment to consider granting more policing powers to municipal police. Given the SAPS resource crisis, it is becoming increasingly irrational to resist the City’s request for our officers to be granted criminal investigative powers.

'We absolutely must improve conviction rates for gang, gun, and drug crime in Cape Town. This is the only way to remove more criminals from the streets of long-suffering communities, where the poorest and most vulnerable are hardest hit,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis.

Earlier this month, the City filed a game-changing proposal for municipal police to be granted powers to investigate crime and up convictions for gang, gun, and drug offences. This forms part of the City’s official comment on new draft regulations for municipal policing powers, published by the National Police Minister for public participation.

‘The City takes 400 illegal guns off the streets per year, but the conviction rate for these cases is just five percent due to our broken criminal justice system. With investigative powers, we can vastly improve this situation.

‘Our officers need more than just the existing powers to search and arrest – they need criminal investigative powers to build prosecution-ready case dockets. City police are often the first responders at crime scenes, and must have the authority to preserve and lawfully obtain evidence, maintain an unbroken chain of custody, and initiate a prosecutable case file. Without these powers, time-sensitive evidence is at risk of degradation or loss, witness recollections are not formally captured, and prospects of successful prosecution are diminished.

‘We believe that our track record has shown that despite limited resources and policing powers, City police have made a massive impact in the fight against crime. With the necessary investigative powers, we are ready to do much more to improve the unacceptably low conviction rates,’ said Alderman JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security.

The City is further recommending that the power to investigate crime be accompanied by:

• power to conduct forensic, ballistic or other forms of examination of exhibits that require expert analysis
• the ability to take witness statements and open dockets
• integration with the SAPS CAS system and/or acceptance of an independent system of crime-recording
• Real-time access to SAPS crime stats info and criminal case status updates

In the interim, the City has introduced a special training module to ensure all its officers have the necessary statement-writing and docket-building skills in anticipation of the devolution of investigative powers

Cape Town continues to invest in growing its policing resources, including:

• Over 1 200 officers deployed to major crime hotspots via the LEAP initiative in partnership with the Western Cape Government
• Further growth of over 1 100 uniformed officers since 2021, including the upcoming deployment of 700 more officers to provide dedicated neighbourhood policing capacity in each ward and to escort service delivery teams in unsafe areas
• A major safety technology investment for smarter policing, including drones, dashcams, gunshot detection, aerial surveillance, CCTV, dashcams, bodycams, automated number-plate recognition, and the digital system to coordinate it all, known as EPIC

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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office