There is a famous moment in the film The Dark Knight when Harvey Dent, Gotham’s doomed district attorney, quips: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Watching the South African Police Service (SAPS) in action—if “action” is the right word for such a lumbering, corrupted apparatus—one wonders whether it ever wore the hero’s cape to begin with.

In the Western Cape, residents are no longer content to wait for national salvation from Pretoria. They are demanding action. The right to police themselves, their own communities. And contrary to the kneejerk reaction this demand might elicit in statist quarters, the case for Western Cape police autonomy is neither secessionist nor unpatriotic. It is a pragmatic plea born of blood-stained pavements, gang-controlled neighborhoods, and a police force so unaccountable it would make Kafka blush.

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A Failing State’s Cops

We should not mince words, SAPS is in a state of deep institutional decay. South Africa’s murder rate in 2024 is still some of the highest it’s been in twenty years—42 per 100 000 people. That’s 72 murders per day. In the Western Cape, it’s worse, 60 per 100 000, rivaling warzones and narco-states. And behind this statistical slaughterhouse lies an open publicly know secret that SAPS, South Africa’s constitutionally-mandated crime-fighter, has become one of the country’s most compromised institutions.

Nowhere is the impact of SAPS’s failure more palpable than in the Western Cape, a province which—though boasting competent provincial governance and innovative safety strategies—has been forced to endure national negligence. While provinces like Limpopo enjoy relative crime calm, Cape Town’s townships are on fire, literally and figuratively. In the first quarter of 2024, 250 out of 268 gang-related murders in the country happened in the Western Cape. That’s over 93%.

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Bureaucracy Meets Brutality

Consider the police-to-population ratio. The national police-to-population ratio is one officer for every 413 residents. The province’s police-to-population ratio currently sits at one officer for every 378 residents. This ratio, which excludes specialised units, has steadily increased since 2018, when it was 1:345. However, why in SAPS’ wisdom is it that the 13 priority stations have a higher ratio than that of the province. Why is it that the areas most ravaged by violence receive the fewest boots on the ground? The UN recommends 1:200. In short, large swathes of the Cape Town metro are policed by ghosts. The arithmetic is as brutal as the streets: fewer officers, more murders, slower responses, and communities left to negotiate safety with gang bosses rather than the state.

Hence why the City of Cape Town and Western Cape Provincial Government are called upon to…

Meanwhile, national SAPS leadership has become a revolving door of incompetence. Five national police commissioners in ten years and one of them, the contemptible Bheki Cele, who was fired as national commissioner in June 2012, following allegations that he had been involved in unlawful property deals, was then appointed as Minister of Police in 2018. This is the same minister who tried to suppress an investigative report into the assassination of Anti-Gang Unit detective Charl Kinnear—an officer murdered after uncovering a ring of SAPS insiders trafficking firearms to gangs. The irony is as brutal as it is tragic, the very institution tasked with public protection has become its own criminal syndicate.

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The Promise of Provincialism

So where do we go from here? For the Western Cape, the answer is increasingly clear: localise safety and policing control. Devolve policing authority. Give the province—not Pretoria—the power to shape its safety strategy, resource its stations, and discipline its officers.

This is not a new idea. Section 206(4) of the Constitution explicitly allows for such devolution, via enabling legislation. No constitutional amendment is needed. Just political will.

The Western Cape has already shown what it can do with limited leeway. The Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP), for instance, has supplemented SAPS with municipal officers focused on hotspot deployment. Unlike SAPS, it uses data to guide patrols. It engages communities. It’s starting to work. In fact, the Western Cape is the only major province to see a slight decline in its murder rate in recent years.

And it’s not just the provincial government pushing the envelope. The City of Cape Town, under the leadership of Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, has emerged as an advocate for municipal policing powers being expanded. The City is actively lobbying for expanded policing powers, particularly investigative powers for its metro police. Currently, municipal officers can enforce bylaws and make arrests, but they are cut off from key functions like detective work or managing criminal dockets. Hill-Lewis has rightly argued that this creates a policing patchwork—municipal officers can catch the suspects, but then must hand them over to an overstretched and often dysfunctional SAPS, only to watch cases collapse in the void of inaction.

Granting investigative powers to well-trained metro police units would close that loop, enabling them not only to arrest but to follow through. This is precisely the kind of targeted, localised reform that could turn the tide in crime-ridden areas. The City is already investing heavily in CCTV, license plate recognition, and digital command centres—tools rendered half-effective without the authority to act on the intelligence they produce.

Now imagine what could be achieved if LEAP and City of Cape Town municipal police weren’t merely auxiliary, but central. A Western Cape Police Service or a Metro Police—with its own police commissioners, oversight mechanisms, and operational autonomy—could prioritise anti-gang strategies, rebuild community trust, and integrate more tightly with provincial social interventions. No more waiting for distant bureaucrats to notice that a township has become a battleground.

And no more watching capable local governments play security sidekick to a national department that has neither the capacity nor the will to reform itself.

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Federalism Isn’t Treason

Now, let’s anticipate the critique, “But this undermines national unity!” To which one might simply respond that if national unity requires tolerating national incompetence, it is not unity—it is bondage.

Federalism, or at least a quasi-federalist approach, is not un-South African. Countries like the United States, Canada, and Brazil employ multi-tiered policing. It allows for experimentation, responsiveness, and localised control—especially vital in a country as heterogeneous as ours. We already accept provincial health departments, education policies, and housing strategies. Why not policing, especially when national models are failing so spectacularly?

To be clear, police autonomy in the Western Cape need not mean total detachment from a national policing strucuture. Intelligence-sharing, national coordination on organised crime, and integrated training frameworks should remain. But command, budgeting, hiring, and day-to-day oversight? Those should belong to the people who live with the consequences.

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Local Accountability, Real Justice

Critics of provincial autonomy often forget that accountability flourishes when those in power are close enough to be voted out. When a police commissioner reports to a provincial legislature rather than a remote ministry, the calculus changes. Performance becomes measurable. Misconduct becomes punishable. And political cover is harder to sustain. And those provinces which don’t? Well, then healthy competition between provinces is created and people vote with their feet (as they already are in fact).

More importantly, a province in charge of its own policing can align law enforcement with broader social goals. In the Western Cape, that means linking crime-fighting to job creation, drug rehabilitation, and youth engagement. It means recognising that the gang war is not just a policing problem—it’s an economic and cultural one too. No central ministry in Pretoria can coordinate that level of nuance across nine vastly different provinces. Nor should it try.

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The Case for a Ministerial Mandate

Section 64F(2) of the South African Police Service Act gives the Minister of Police a discretionary power that allows thim to delegate additional powers to municipal police services, including investigative functions. But like so many of our governance tools, it sits unused, gathering metaphorical dust in the statute books while communities burn and bullets fly.

The Western Cape Provincial Government and the City of Cape Town must actively and vocally advocate for the Minister to invoke this provision—urgently, and with specificity. Because while full provincial devolution may take time, a ministerial decree could offer a powerful interim solution, one that brings tangible relief to communities now, not after years of parliamentary back-and-forth.

The powers envisaged under Section 64F(2) need not be blanket or permanent (a carrot to wave in front of the Minister to get him to sign the regulations). They could be piloted in designated precincts, capped at a certain number of officers, and reviewed after set intervals. But they must be deployed, because the status quo—where municipal officers detain suspects, only to hand them over to a SAPS system plagued by backlog and bureaucratic atrophy—is failing the very people the police are meant to protect.

Mayor Hill-Lewis has already made the case that Cape Town’s municipal officers are capable of more. The city has invested heavily in surveillance infrastructure, license plate recognition systems, crime intelligence platforms, and boots on the ground through LEAP. But without the authority to investigate, these tools remain only half-effective. Footage is collected but not followed up. Suspects are identified but not interrogated. Patterns are observed but not prosecuted. It’s policing with one hand tied behind the back—and that is not policing at all. And this is not the fault of the City of Cape Town or Western Cape Government but the reality is that their law enforcement is effectively castrated, and at the mercy of a compromised national police force.

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Working through the cabinet

A ministerial mandate would change this. It would allow the City to train and deploy a cohort of investigative officers—municipal detectives, if you will—who could close the loop from enforcement to prosecution. This is especially critical in gang-ridden areas, where community members are often willing to cooperate with local officers they trust, but are hesitant to engage with SAPS detectives they associate with intimidation, corruption, or sheer absence.

Critics will say this risks creating parallel policing structures. But in truth, such structures already exist—unofficially and dysfunctionally. The City enforces bylaws and patrols hotspots. SAPS handles investigations, when it can. The result is fragmentation. A Section 64F(2) intervention would harmonise this overlap, providing clarity, coordination, and shared responsibility.

Moreover, Section 24 of the Act gives the Minister further scope to regulate how these expanded powers are exercised. This means oversight mechanisms can be embedded into the rollout. The Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town should offer to co-design these regulatory frameworks—detailing training standards, investigative protocols, disciplinary channels, and performance metrics. In other words, the risks of abuse or overreach can be managed. What cannot be managed is the risk of doing nothing.

Importantly, invoking Section 64F(2) also sets a useful precedent. It is a constitutional toe-dip into the waters of decentralised policing—an opportunity to test the hypothesis that local governments, closer to the crime and to the community, can do better. If successful, it builds the case for broader devolution. If not, it can be revised or rescinded. But failing to use the tools available, when the need is this urgent, is not prudence—it is paralysis.

This is where leadership must now reside. The Western Cape Provincial Government and City of Cape Town must not merely request this intervention—they must demand it. They must lobby, litigate if necessary, and make it politically untenable for the Minister to sit on his hands while mothers bury sons and communities cower indoors after dark.

Because while grand constitutional amendments may be the endgame, Section 64F(2) is the move we can make today. And in a country where safety is not guaranteed, that might just be the most patriotic act of all.

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Conclusion

Autonomy for the Western Cape, it is about reclaiming the promise that the Constitution makes to every South African, the right to safety, dignity, and justice.

Let us not be communities who waited for permission to protect our people.

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