Geordin Hill-Lewis
The article “Most of LEAP’s R500m spent on salaries” (Weekend Argus) missed the point – LEAP is working, the most violent communities are getting safer.
The programme primarily involves hiring more law enforcement officers to patrol in a focused way in the most violent precincts of the city. So it goes without saying that salaries are the biggest component of costs. That is a no brainer, as they say.
The relevant question is efficacy - and here the results are a very encouraging indication of what can be achieved when governments work together, like the City of Cape Town and Western Cape Government are doing to address crime in our city.
The recent crime statistics are a clear indication that national government is simply incapable of arresting the increasing crime rate across the country. Far from questioning LEAP, it is time to double down on LEAP. We should be aiming to move towards Premier Alan Winde’s target of 3000 new officers in Cape Town.
It is also time to devolve much more policing powers away from a stumbling central management model, and vest them with competent provinces and cities. We’re already taking on so much more, we may as well make this formal and devolve the powers.
There are many hard working and dedicated SAPS officers, and the City works well with SAPS local leadership. But they labour under a chaotic and dysfunctional national management that has deeply eroded public faith in that institution.
Bucking the national trend, the massive reductions in the latest crime statistics for the most violence-ridden areas in Cape Town is something to celebrate. A 40.5 % decrease in violent crime in Kraaifontein, a 24.1 % decrease in Nyanga, a 21.1 % decrease in Khayelitsha and a 14.5 %decrease in Harare: these are not just numbers, they represent Capetonians alive today because of this intervention.
I’ve just tabled our draft budget for the City, and in our first year of this government we are providing for 150 new officers and 80 new auxiliaries, for a total of 230 new officers in one year. We are also starting a new protection unit for frontline staff and community facilities. And we’re offering more support for neighbourhood watches and community policing. We’ll keep making this investments to make Cape Town safer.
Last year, I proposed a plan to devolve R1 billion in police funding immediately. The plan, which I submitted as a then Member of Parliament to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, requests National Treasury to create a brand-new municipal grant, financed out of the current bloated VIP protection budget (where public funds spent on salaries to provide blue light brigades for politicians) to fund enhanced powers for local law enforcement and metro police in cities that have demonstrated that they have the capacity to run their own law enforcement operations.
I am convinced this is the future. And in Cape Town we will push forward to that future as quickly as we can.
Hill-Lewis is the Executive Mayor of the City of Cape Town