SONA 2026: City of Cape Town once again calls for devolving policing powers

A Mayor’s Ultimatum on the Nation’s Biggest Crime Stage

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis stood on the stone steps of Parliament two weeks ago, flanked by metro officers in navy blue, and turned the annual State of the Nation spectacle into a deadline. He wants President Ramaphosa’s 12 February speech to contain one line: Cape Town Metro Police may open, investigate and enrol its own gun, gang and drug cases. The demand is polite in form - draft regulations were filed last year - but the tone is now knife-edge. After the Acting Police Minister skipped a scheduled meeting while rehearsing SONA security inside the city, Hill-Lewis publicly warned that the City will “head for court” if the speech stays silent. His favourite number follows every microphone thrust toward him: only five of every 100 illegal firearms grabbed by Cape officers end in a conviction. The other 95, he says, slip back onto the streets because SAPS detectives cannot close the file.

The figures behind the sound-bite are stark. Between January and April this year metro units confiscated 119 illegal guns, pushing the 2025 total to 455. They also seized 16 000 doses of cocaine, heroin and tik and made 4 500 arrests. Yet without authority to record a statement, request forensics or hand a completed docket to prosecutors, each arrest is a turnstile, not a terminus. Alderman JP Smith, who controls the safety portfolio, calls it “revolving-door theatre”: officers risk their lives to grab the weapon, then watch it circle back because the paperwork stalls in SAPS corridors. A parliamentary reply last August listed 200 unfilled detective posts across Cape Town precincts; Philippi, Delft and Nyanga run at 40 % vacancy. Meanwhile the City has hired 1 263 extra officers since 2021 - up 48 % - and now fields 560 more vehicles than SAPS on Cape roads. Infrastructure is ready; the legal ignition key is missing.

Hill-Lewis refuses to wait another financial year. Behind the scenes he has instructed senior counsel to prepare an urgent High Court application arguing that the refusal to let metro police open dockets breaches the constitutional right to effective policing and exposes the municipality to class-action liability for foreseeable gang violence. Draft papers are already circulating; the only thing left is the trigger sentence in the President’s address. Until the gavel falls, the safety department controls the one lever it still owns: visibility. Over the past weekend 300 additional officers flooded Hanover Park and Beacon Valley under “Operation Lockdown”, netting 19 more firearms and 1 200 rounds. Each gun was tagged, photographed and forwarded to SAPS with yet another memorandum pleading for closure.

The Legal Road-Map: Two Statutory Levers and a Constitutional Grey Zone

The City’s lawyers have drawn a two-step route. First, they want the national minister to sign the Municipal Police Investigative Powers Regulations already in the tray. The draft rules would let metro officers register case dockets in the SAPS CAS system, interview witnesses, compile photo-plan books, subpoena evidence and hand a prima-facie package to the National Prosecuting Authority. Second, Parliament must insert a clause into the South African Police Service Act that brands qualified metro officers as “designated detectives” inside their borders, a label now reserved for SAPS members. Constitutional scholars point to section 205: policing is a national function, yet municipalities may run “municipal police services subject to national legislation”. Hill-Lewis contends the clause is elastic; nothing forbids Parliament from delegating the investigative slice as long as national oversight remains intact.

National government answers with caution. The Acting Police Minister, physically in Cape Town for SONA rehearsals, released only two lines: “any devolution must guard against fragmentation of the criminal-justice cluster”. SAPS management warns that municipal detectives could be captured by local politicians, while POPCRU threatens mass action if metro police receive “pseudo-SAPS” powers without falling under the same central disciplinary code. Ironically, the same briefing papers that raise the alarm also concede manpower collapse: the national detective-to-population ratio has slipped from 1:560 in 2012 to 1:840 in 2025, far above the UN’s 1:450 benchmark. In the Western Cape the gap yawns wider - 1:1 200 - a shortfall the provincial cabinet blames for the country’s worst per-capita murder tally: 46 per 100 000, double the national figure.

Cape Town tries to pre-empt autonomy fears with built-in handcuffs. Every municipal docket would be audited quarterly by IPID, prosecutors would keep the final say on enrolment, and no officer could wear the detective badge without first passing the 18-month SAPS Detective Learning Programme taught at Paarl and Chatsworth academies. The City has already forked out R28 million to put 120 officers through the course and has budgeted places for another 300 in July 2026. Rather than beg Treasury, the municipality plans to self-fund the pipeline, signalling it is prepared to bankroll the entireupgrade if only the statutory lid is lifted.

Cash, Tech and Community: What the City Will Spend If It Wins

Victory on the legal front will unlock a war-chest already pencilled into the 2026/27 draft budget. A record R7.2 billion - 11 % of the total city spend - has been ear-marked for safety, overtaking electricity maintenance for the first time. R1.4 billion of that will capitalise a new Integrated Ballistics and Digital Forensics Hub in Ndabeni, kitted out with a DNA lab, a 3-D gun-print database and a facial-recognition server. The goal is to stop queueing at the overstretched SAPS forensic lab in Plattekloof, where gun-swab turnaround times have ballooned to 14 months. City managers say the hub can be live within 18 months if health and policing regulators issue permits - permits that hinge on the same legal question now sitting on the President’s desk: can a municipality process forensic exhibits for cases it still cannot prosecute?

Township residents care less about constitutional nuance than about whether the plan survives the next cabinet shuffle. Lucinda Evans, who shelters abused women in Lavender Hill, says mothers on the Cape Flats can pinpoint gun storages within 24 hours of a shooting but refuse to speak to SAPS detectives who never reappear. “If City police can guarantee a trial, not just an arrest, witnesses will talk,” she told a community meeting in Retreat. A University of the Western Cape survey in Manenberg found 63 % of households would rather report serious crime to metro officers if those officers could carry the statement all the way to court.

Business has opened its wallet too. The Cape Town Central City Improvement District calculates that every one-percentage-point rise in conviction, driven by an extra detective, saves the CBD R28 million in stock shrinkage, medical bills and cancelled bookings. The district has offered to co-fund a 40-person city-centre detective unit staffed by metro police sworn to prosecute, provided the tourism levy that bankrolls the improvement district is recognised as a complementary revenue stream. Similar public-private hybrids already work in Bogotá and Medellín, where municipal detectives handled 38 % of commercial crime files in 2024 and pushed business-confidence indices back to pre-pandemic levels.

Global Precedents, Political Chess and a Mother's Shrug

Cape Town’s policy shop has cribbed homework from cities that decided waiting for national fixes was lethal. Kigali City Police in Rwanda have convicted 1 400 street-gang members since 2021 using municipal detectives seconded to the national prosecution service, cutting violent contact crime by 28 % in three years. In the UK the one-square-mile City of London Police - technically municipal - investigates the country’s entire insurance-fraud caseload. California’s SAFER Zones let LAPD detectives own every narcotics case inside designated gang-injunction neighbourhoods, using county prosecutors. Each model keeps a senior state advocate in the loop, a safeguard Cape Town has copied: no municipal docket moves without a signature from the NPA.

Parliamentary politics is catching the wave. The Democratic Alliance has tabled a private-member’s bill that would let any municipality passing a competency test assume “concurrent investigative jurisdiction” over organised crime, gender-based violence and illegal firearms. The bill will probably die in the justice committee, but DA strategists hope it forces the ANC to declare a position before the 2026 local elections. ActionSA and the Freedom Front Plus have already pledged support, arguing that South Africa’s 2016 decision to let metros run their own bus fleets shows well-capitalised cities can outperform national agencies when statute gives them room.

On the Cape Flats the chess game feels galaxies away. Nadia September, a Valhalla Park mother of three, says her 14-year-old son can point out the house where neighbourhood shooters stash their rifles but alters his walk to school to avoid it. “If the City can take the guns away for good, they can call themselves whatever they want,” she shrugs. The President’s podium is six days away; behind the curtain mayoral advisers have counsel on standby. Whether the devolution pledge lands in the speech or not, Cape Town’s safety department is already living in the next chapter - one where the only thing thinner than the statute book is the patience of a mother counting bullets in the street.

[{"question": "

Why is Cape Town seeking greater policing powers for its Metro Police?

", "answer": "Cape Town is seeking greater policing powers for its Metro Police primarily because the current system is ineffective in prosecuting gun, gang, and drug crimes. Only 5 out of 100 illegal guns seized lead to a conviction. City officers lack the authority to fully investigate these cases, preventing them from opening dockets, requesting forensics, or compiling full dockets for prosecutors. This hinders convictions and allows criminals back onto the streets, impacting public safety."}, {"question": "

What specific powers does Cape Town want for its Metro Police?

", "answer": "Cape Town wants its Metro Police to be able to open, investigate, and enroll their own gun, gang, and drug cases. This includes the authority to register case dockets in the SAPS CAS system, interview witnesses, compile photo-plan books, subpoena evidence, and hand a prima-facie package to the National Prosecuting Authority. They also want qualified metro officers to be recognized as 'designated detectives' under the South African Police Service Act."}, {"question": "

What is the Mayor of Cape Town's ultimatum regarding these powers?

", "answer": "Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has publicly demanded that President Ramaphosa's State of the Nation speech on February 12th include a clear statement granting Cape Town Metro Police the authority to open, investigate, and enrol their own gun, gang, and drug cases. He has warned that if the speech remains silent on this matter, the City will pursue legal action through an urgent High Court application, arguing a breach of the constitutional right to effective policing."}, {"question": "

What financial and infrastructural investments is Cape Town prepared to make if it gains these powers?

", "answer": "If granted the expanded powers, Cape Town plans to invest significantly in its safety portfolio. A record R7.2 billion is earmarked for safety in the 2026/27 budget. This includes R1.4 billion for a new Integrated Ballistics and Digital Forensics Hub in Ndabeni, equipped with a DNA lab, 3-D gun-print database, and facial-recognition server. The city has already invested R28 million to train 120 officers in the SAPS Detective Learning Programme and has budgeted for another 300 places."}, {"question": "

What are the national government's concerns regarding Cape Town's request?

", "answer": "The national government, through the Acting Police Minister, has expressed caution, stating that any devolution of powers must 'guard against fragmentation of the criminal-justice cluster.' Concerns include the potential for municipal detectives to be influenced by local politicians, and POPCRU has threatened mass action if metro police receive 'pseudo-SAPS' powers without being subject to the same central disciplinary code as the South African Police Service (SAPS)."}, {"question": "

How does Cape Town propose to address concerns about accountability and fragmentation?

", "answer": "Cape Town has proposed several safeguards to address concerns about accountability and fragmentation. These include quarterly audits of all municipal dockets by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), ensuring that prosecutors retain the final say on case enrolment, and requiring that no metro officer can become a detective without successfully completing the 18-month SAPS Detective Learning Programme. The city also plans to self-fund the necessary training and infrastructure, signaling its commitment to a robust and accountable system."}]