Metro Police Should Be Allowed To Investigate Crime
If you want to prevent crime, the only surefire way is ensuring that crimes are investigated, and criminals are convicted.
The South African Police Service (SAPS) is not equipped to deal with crime locally or nationally. And insisting that SAPS as a centralised entity should be the sole investigator of crimes on even a local level is just creating a recipe for chaos and apathy.
South Africa is one of the most violent and crime-ridden countries in the world. From January to December 2024, there were over 26,000 recorded murders. Our daily murder rate is higher than Ukraine’s civilian death toll. Roughly the same amount of people has been murdered in South Africa than the total who have died in Gaza – including combat deaths in the period since 7 October 2023 and now.
Roughly 1.1 million households were burglarised in 2023/2024. South Africa loses approximately R700bn, roughly 10% of its GDP, annually to crime. In 2022/2023, there were over 53,000 reported cases of sexual violence.
Yet, despite this scourge of crime, the national government insists on SAPS doing all the work. Even so it is woefully equipped to do so. There is a dire police shortage and not enough detectives to even scrape the surface. In 2025, every detective is sitting with 300 – 500 cases each. Once a crime occurs, there is little to no capacity to investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice.
This was all in line with the African National Congress’ (ANC) vision of policing. When they came to power in 1994, they fundamentally reformed South Africa’s police by abandoning the autonomy and gutting the effectiveness of detectives and investigators, and replacing law enforcement with the idea of “visible policing”.
The idea was that with Apartheid ended, and the ANC’s policies able to put a stop to all socio-economic issues, there would be no need for criminals to commit crimes. The only stopgap needed would be a handful of visible police officers to deter opportunists.
Of course, this entire policy was delusional, but it resulted in SAPS being gutted as an organisation, and the present-day situation in which South Africa is at the mercy of countless criminals and having to rely on private security just to survive.
Despite Cape Town being unarguably better governed than the rest of South Africa, it is still embattled with gang violence and skyrocketing murders. SAPS has not made a dent in dealing with these gangs and is often too afraid to even enter the Cape Flats.
No matter how effective Cape Town’s governance, it’s primary issues cannot be solved while policing is centralised. While SAPS is controlled by national government, our local stations will never receive the funding or attention they deserve – and any corruption in the national hierarchy will inevitably infect every station.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that decentralisation, notably in law enforcement, improves efficiency, responsiveness, capacity and accountability.
Decentralised police are closer to the community, care about it more, are accountable to their neighbours, and understand local contexts far better than an out-of-town national appointee.
In fact, decentralised policing is the global norm. The USA has police on every level, all specialised to deal with specific problems. Germany, Canada, the UK and Australia all have localised police forces. Not a centralised law enforcement holding a monopoly. South Africa holds onto an inferior model because the ANC wants to retain complete authority.
Cape Town has a local police force. But as it stands, this police force is little more than a community watch group. They are allowed to deter crime through patrols, and to make arrests. But they are not allowed to investigate crimes.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis wants to change this. He has pushed for municipal police to be allowed to investigate crimes, so that Cape Town’s more accountable metro cops will be allowed to start dealing with our local crime issues.
As it stands, the functions of municipal police are (64E of the SAPS Amendment Act (Act 83 of 1998):
a) Traffic policing.
b) Policing municipal by-laws and regulations.
c) Preventing crime.
Hill-Lewis has proposed that investigation be added to this list. But I would argue that C already covers that.
Studies have shown how the biggest deterrence of crime is certainty of punishment, not severity of punishment. Increased police presence accomplishes little if there is no effective investigation to bring criminals to justice.
Investigation leads to convictions, which prevents repeat offences, and is the best way to disincentivise criminals from wanting to engage in crime. If you want to prevent crime, the only surefire way is ensuring that crimes are investigated, and criminals are convicted.
Current framing of 64E(C) as not allowing investigation is purely based on petty politics and the insistence that SAPS should hold all the power. Perhaps, the national government is afraid that local police will be able to discover connections between organised crime and high-ranking politicians.
Regardless, Hill-Lewis doesn’t need to wait. The phrasing and logic are clear. Metro Cops are enabled to prevent crimes. And the only way to really do that is to investigate them.
The City of Cape Town should start equipping metro police to become investigators immediately. No need for permission. Hill-Lewis has a mandate to the people of Cape Town, who currently suffer under SAPS inadequacy and the scourge of criminality. He owes it to his voters to start preventing crime in a substantive way, and not to keep asking permission from corrupt politicians who don’t care about this country or his city.
Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a Senior Associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity.