Dear Editor
The DA has written to the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) Western Cape Provincial Police Commissioner, Lt. Genl. Thembisile Patekile, to demand a clear timeline and operational plan for the so-called “extraordinary measures” promised by the Minister of Police to combat gang violence on the Cape Flats.
The promise was made during a Question-session in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) last week. In order for the undertaking to garner any credibility, this timeline must include concrete answers on when the Anti-Gang Unit (AGU) will finally have a fixed establishment, a full complement of vehicles and the full complement of resources needed to perform its mandate. This is the bare minimum we can do to capacitate those brave men and women who risk their lives for our safety.
The SAPS’s priorities could not be more painful to observe than in its response to two tragic cases of stray bullets. When a bullet was said to have allegedly struck the Deputy President’s blue light convoy earlier this year, SAPS acted immediately; security was escalated, resources mobilised and threat assessments commissioned without delay. Yet, when 4-year-old Davin Africa was shot in his sleep in Wesbank while lying next to his pregnant mother on 14 February 2025 – there was no media-inflated response by SAPS senior management, no public commitment of extraordinary action and no urgency in finding the funds to address AGU resource scarcity.
This institutional indifference is further underlined by the Minister’s own admission in reply to a DA parliamentary question that between 1 March 2020 and 31 December 2024, 3,777 gang and/or gang-related murders and 5,463 attempted murders were recorded in the Western Cape. That’s more than two murders and nearly four attempted murders per day, overwhelmingly concentrated in the Cape Flats gang zones. Despite this answer, there is still not a word of a threat assessment or urgent prioritisation for these communities.
Despite this daily carnage, the Anti-Gang Unit remains in disrepair. It has no fixed structure, only half its vehicle fleet is operational and it operates from an inadequate base at Faure Farm. Repeated letters and warnings by the DA to the Provincial Commissioner have gone unanswered.
In response to a separate written parliamentary question, the Minister claimed that the AGU is structurally established and supported and proceeded to blame resource constraints for its underfunding and chronic understaffing. The double standard is blinding. And it is an insult to the thousands of families on the Cape Flats who live and die under gang rule.
The Minister’s vague assurances of “extraordinary measures” holds no water whilst he refuses to say whether Lt. Genl. Patekile would be held accountable for his clear failures at Provincial Police Commissioner.
The DA has also written to the Chairperson of the Select Committee on Petitions and Executive Undertakings in the NCOP to request that the Minister be called to appear before the Committee and account for this undertaking. This Committee ensures that commitments made by the Executive in the NCOP are monitored and enforced.
The Minister’s promise of “extraordinary measures” must now be held to that standard. The DA will continue its oversight relentlessly.
Regards
Nicholas Gotsell MP
DA NCOP Member on Security & Justice