Attention Editors: Please find English audio by MPP Gillion Bosman attached.
After 10 deaths in less than a week, the DA in the Western Cape echoes the calls of Gugulethu residents for greater crimefighting resource allocations to the area, and for an investigation into the clear inability of the SAPS to gather and act on meaningful crime intelligence.
Four men and one woman were killed in Gugulethu on Saturday night, bringing the week’s death toll in the area to ten after a separate killing of five individuals earlier in the week. According to some media reports, a SAPS close protection officer attached to the Deputy Minister of Police is among the dead.
As of yet, no arrests in either case have been reported.
These murders are part of a larger trend of mass killings that SAPS has seemingly been unable to stop. The Western Cape suffers from a chronic under allocation of SAPS resources, with less than 20 000 operational SAPS members working in the province as of 2023. The Gugulethu SAPS precinct remains one of the most under-resourced SAPS installations in the country, with a police—to-population ratio of 1:874. This essentially means that one SAPS member may be responsible for the safety of almost a thousand residents – an impossible task.
The Western Cape Government (WCG) has done everything in its power to make the area safer. LEAP officers have been deployed to the Gugulethu SAPS station continuously since 2020, where they have assisted in arrests, patrols, and the confiscation of drugs and illegal firearms. However, the SAPS budget for the 2023 financial year is almost double the equitable share allocated to the entire Western Cape. As it stands, the WCG simply cannot do it alone.
DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Community Safety Gillion Bosman says: “It is heartbreaking to see more death and violence in our communities, with no signs of improvement. It is vital that SAPS comes to the table and provides the resources that are so desperately needed so that a meaningful impact can be made on the ground. When policing is devolved to the provincial level, the DA will ensure that the same data-led approach to crimefighting pioneered by the Western Cape Government is applied to all policing in the province.”
“We are in the process of inviting Western Cape SAPS management to brief the Standing Committee on Community Safety on crimefighting in the Western Cape. I will ensure that questions are addressed to SAPS regarding this matter.”