Devolution of SAPS powers is a matter of life and death

MANENBERG, Hanover Park, Delft, Mitchells Plain, and Nyanga, to name a few, are areas that have become battlegrounds, and they are stained with the blood of our people.

- BENEDICTA VAN MINNEN

Since January of this year, over 2,000 people have been shot in the Western Cape. That is nearly 13 lives shattered every single day. Children cannot walk to school without fearing for their lives. Mothers, grandmothers, and ordinary citizens patrol the streets in reflective vests because they've long since given up on the idea that the National Goyernment, with whom the policing mandate lies, will protect them. This is the result of a collapse of governance.

We can no longer ignore the painful truth: SAPS is failing us. The South African Police Service is under-trained, under-resourced, and weighed down by political infighting.

Detective units are drowning under dockets, with months-long delays in forensic testing, and criminal investigations ground to a halt because of systemic inefficiencies. Illegal firearms circulate freely on our streets because conviction rates for possession of illegal firearms sit at an appalling 5%. Local law enforcement units have been able to confiscate over 1,670 illegal firearms since 2021, but these arrests are rendered unfruitful because of SAPS’s failure to follow through with effective investigations. Half of these cases never even make it to court.

What remains of the gang units? They are chronically underfunded, their vehicles are broken, and staff morale is lower than it has ever been. Firearms flood across borders, entering from corrupt supply chains, even from our own state arms procurement agency, Armscor. But when it comes to recovering these firearms, the response is sporadic and poorly coordinated.

And it does not stop with policing. Our parole system is just as broken.