The Western Cape’s Killing Fields

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

After months of delay, the crime statistics for the first and second quarters of 2025/2026 have finally been released, and they reveal a province in deep crisis.

In the first quarter alone, murders increased from 1,138 last year to 1,148 this year. Behind each number is a life taken and a community left reeling. Every week brings yet another mass shooting.

From Delft to Mfuleni to Kraaifontein, entire families and neighbourhoods are being terrorised.

Mfuleni has already recorded 156 murders across Q1 and Q2, a staggering 61.4% of last year’s total murders at the station, reached in just six months.

The broader picture is just as alarming. Last year, the Western Cape recorded a total of 4,467 murders. In only half a year, the province has already reached 2,308 murders, 51.6% of last year’s total. We are only six months in.

This surge is even more shocking when viewed against the national trend, where the country has recorded a decrease in murders. While South Africa moves forward, the Western Cape is falling further behind.
Gang-related killings are spiralling out of control. Of the 632 gang-related murders nationally in the first half of the year, 575, an average of 91%, occurred in the Western Cape alone. Gunfire has become the background noise of daily life for far too many people, while the state’s response grows quieter and more inadequate with each passing week.

Just weeks ago, the Western Cape Government unveiled its Safety Plan 2.0, a purported update to its strategy aimed at reducing violent crime. Yet what was presented was disappointing at best and dangerously evasive at worst.

The silence that followed speaks volumes: it reflects a government that has lost both the moral courage and political will to confront the scale of violence consuming this province.

The Western Cape’s murder rate was already an unacceptable 15.2 per 100,000 people in Q1 of 2025/2026. Any increase in a figure that high is not simply a statistic; it is an indictment of failed leadership.

Without real investment in social and economic opportunities and without effective, community-driven policing, the so-called “Safety Plan” remains little more than a slogan.

Lives are being lost not because the crisis is unsolvable, but because the political will to act decisively is missing.

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