Premier
In relation to policing in the Western Cape:
(a) What is the constitutional basis for the devolution of policing authority to a province from the national government, (b) how much funding would be needed per year for the Western Cape Government to take complete control of policing in the province, (c) how soon would the Western Cape Government be able to build up the capacity to take over policing in the province and (d) what are the advantages of more localised authority over policing resources?
[a] We believe there is a firm basis for the devolution of policing to the provincial sphere. Reliance could be placed on the provisions of section 99, read with section 206, of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa to assign to the relevant Provincial Ministers such powers and functions contained in the South African Police Service (SAPS) Act, 1995, as may be appropriate to empower the Provincial Government to exercise more effective and efficient control over the police service within the province.
Section 206[4] of the Constitution also makes express provision for the assignment of policing functions to the provincial executive through national legislation and/or national policing policy, in terms of which provinces could be enabled to exercise policing powers beyond mere monitoring and oversight, which has to date been the norm.
[b] A costing would follow once the legal and constitutional frameworks have been put in place. Funds would be required to shift from the national government in tandem with the reassignment of the function.
[c] A time frame would follow once the legal and constitutional frameworks have been put in place. Through the LEAP programme, however, the provincial government has already built up some capacity to ensure deployment that is in the best interests of those citizens most affected by crime. Our area-based deployment approach has yielded significant successes, bringing down the crime rates in key hotspots such as Nyanga, which is no longer the murder capital of South Africa.
[d] The current national police service is failing our residents, demonstrated by rising crime rates year on year. Crime is impacting the poorest of the poor most heavily. When we see our children cowering under their school desks to avoid the bullets of gangsters, we know that change is necessary. We can no longer have our police service run from Pretoria – under management which continues to fail us -when we know that we can manage the police service better on behalf of the citizens we directly serve.
A police service run by the Western Cape Government would be accountable to the people. It would have set targets for crime reduction and used unique approaches – as we did during Covid-19, to make sure we achieve these targets. We would work with the national government and municipalities to make sure that we have a full-scale, multi-sphere response.
We would also have a scientific and data-driven approach, which would allow us to focus our interventions where they are most needed. These would be combined with violence prevention strategies aimed at preventing crime in the first place.
The Western Cape Government is already showing what is possible with our Provincial Safety Plan. We have so far deployed around 1000 LEAP officers in crime hotspots in the Metro, with significant results in crime reduction, and believe we can scale these results dramatically once the police service is devolved to the Western Cape Government.
