Cape Culture of Gangsterism- NGO Report Contains Rapid Intervention Roadmap for Government

GOOD Speech by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament:

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime has published the latest edition of its Western Cape Gang Monitor, which should be required reading for a Western Cape Government that is singularly failing to counter the culture of gang association and violence.

The December 2025 Monitor includes 12 recommendations for rapid intervention, most of which the authors view as actionable within one to three months. The 12-point plan addresses what the authors describe as three critical failings that have allowed the crisis to deepen: inadequate police accountability, the absence of a coherent prevention strategy, and the unchecked flow of illegal firearms.

Tellingly, the Western Cape Government’s oft-stated priority to place more boots on the ground does not feature. The authors instead advocate for more effective policing in the eight most violent precincts, as well as social and community development.

The report does recommend devolving certain policing powers to the Province and the City, but not necessarily in the manner the DA governments of these entities would prefer. To depoliticise responses to gangsterism, the authors recommend that provincial and city law-enforcement structures account to an oversight mechanism comprising the SAPS, NPA, SSA, Provincial Government and the Department of Social Development.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime is an international NGO supported by a network of 600 global and regional experts in policy research and the development of responses to the impacts of organised crime on people, development and governance.

Its latest Western Cape Gang Monitor analyses ten current trends in gang dynamics, the factors that generate clusters of violence, and the ever-shifting challenge of organised crime activities, in addition to the plan for the rapid mitigation of gang violence.

The report is published at the end of a year of escalating gang violence in the Western Cape that has sustained the upward trend of the past five years.

The 12-point plan it sets out, the researchers say, can help form a basis for decisive action against escalating gang violence and for supporting the individuals and communities it endangers and harms.

The recommended interventions are specifically designed to meet the critical failings in police accountability, illegal firearms and crime prevention.

According to the report, prevention must be at the centre of any strategy to reduce criminality, particularly in contexts where gang violence is entrenched and intergenerational. Data from the 2025 Global Organised Crime Index shows that South Africa’s weakest resilience indicators are prevention, and victim and witness support. The Index also shows that these two indicators have the highest impact on reducing certain elements of criminality. Marginal improvements to prevention strategies, and those targeting victim and witness support, can therefore have a significant and direct impact on reducing gang violence.

Strengthening prevention through early interventions, community-based programmes, social protection, gender-sensitive approaches and youth pathways targets the weak spots that gangs exploit. This is particularly important because the Index shows that while criminality is rising, its rate of increase is slowing, creating an opportunity for targeted resilience reforms to produce lasting reductions in organised crime.

Improving victim and witness protection is equally essential, not only from a rights-based perspective but as a core crime-reduction mechanism. Strengthening formal witness protection, investing in gender-sensitive and community-anchored victim services, and building confidential reporting channels undermine the power gangs exert over communities. Taken together, prevention and victim and witness protection form a mutually reinforcing strategy that can help South Africa move from high criminality towards stronger resilience.

The report concludes that these measures are not presented as a complete solution to gang violence, but as urgent interventions to arrest the current trajectory. Longer-term strategies that adopt a whole-of-society approach are required to dismantle the deep-seated cycles of violence. Implementation requires political will, adequate resources and sustained commitment. The cost of inaction, measured in lives lost and communities destroyed, is unacceptable.

The police’s quarterly crime statistics show that the billions of rands the Province is spending on its Western Cape Safety Plan, much of it on the deployment of so-called LEAP officers, is not reducing crime.

What the Western Cape Gang Monitor tells us is that the Province’s strategies are not sophisticated enough to address the deeply rooted gang culture, and that there are better ways in which taxpayers’ money should be spent.

Since its inception the GOOD Party has advocated for the development of social environments conducive to human development on the Cape Flats as a critical measure to provide redress for the past, build dignity and self-esteem, and reduce crime.

The Western Cape Gang Monitor includes a detailed map of Cape Town highlighting the presence and prevalence of gang violence. The map resembles the one recently published by the City that identifies areas earmarked for densification. Densifying the most densely populated areas of Cape Town, where most people of colour live and where most of the violence occurs, will entrench the ghettoisation of the Cape Flats indefinitely.

GOOD Manifesto on Social Cohesion: Fostering social cohesion and unity among diverse communities.

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