Dear Editor
SAPS has, after more than three months of inaction and sustained DA pressure, finally called up two Cape Town K9 handlers and their dogs for specialist narcotics training at Roodeplaat.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has therefore written to the National Police Commissioner to demand urgent answers on:
- Why all six Cape Town K9s and their handlers, who have been course ready for months, were not sent for training at the same time;
- What this, and Western Cape Police Commissioner Thembisile Patekile’s silence, says about SAPS’ operational focus on the province; and
- Whether the Roodeplaat K9 Training Academy has the capacity and commitment to meet urgent policing needs in the Western Cape.
While this is a step forward, it again exposes the reactive and haphazard way SAPS approaches crime fighting, and their unwillingness to confront the gang and drug crisis head on.
Only two of the six medically fit and course ready dogs from the Cape Town station have been called up, just three days before departure. At this rate, the remaining four may only be trained in 2026. This is nowhere near enough to address the severe shortage of narcotics dogs in the Western Cape, which currently has only one operational SAPS narcotics dog in the middle of a drug and gang war on the Cape Flats.
For weeks, Commissioner Patekile has ignored repeated DA demands for answers while gang murders in Harare, Delft and Mitchell’s Plain surge, leaving communities without the proactive policing K9 units can provide.
K9s are proven force multipliers against drugs, guns and gangs. The time for half measures is over. Every day of delay is another day criminals operate with impunity.
Regards
Nicholas Gotsell MP
DA NCOP Member on Security & Justice