DA Hypocrisy on Policing Exposed

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

It is disingenuous and pure political point-scoring for the Democratic Alliance to jump on the crime-warden bandwagon in Gauteng. The DA’s own Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) in the Western Cape has cost taxpayers more than R4 billion and failed to show tangible results in reducing crime. Yet, the DA now seeks to claim the moral high ground in Gauteng while ignoring the failure of its own policing vanity project.

Both Gauteng’s Crime Prevention Wardens (CPW/Amapanyaza) and the Western Cape’s LEAP officers exist in the same legal grey zone. Neither province has the authority to establish parallel policing structures. GOOD has been consistent that these unregulated, politically driven initiatives are illegal, ineffective, and unsustainable.

The truth is that neither the DA nor the ANC has addressed the root of the crime crisis. Instead, both have used public desperation for safety as political fodder to score points before elections. The national government’s failure to properly regulate policing powers under Section 334 of the Criminal Procedure Act has created a vacuum and GOOD raised this issue two years ago when we warned that provincial “instant policing” schemes echo the apartheid-era commando model – lightly trained, politically loyal enforcers used to create the illusion of safety. Real police officers undergo 24 months of rigorous training; the LEAP and CPW recruits received a fraction of that.

If the DA was genuinely committed to public safety, it would fix the legislative gaps and invest in addressing the root causes of crime – poverty, inequality, and unemployment – instead of duplicating under-trained, over-funded, and questionably legal security forces.

South Africans deserve competent, lawful, and accountable policing, not duelling vanity projects designed for press releases rather than public protection.

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