How gang violence is overwhelming police resources in the Western Cape

Provincial Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Thembisile Patekile has acknowledged that the Western Cape police force is struggling to maintain effective crime-fighting capabilities as officers and detectives are being poached by other sectors, while they battled to match salaries.

He said semigration patterns were further straining resources in the province.

Patekile, alongside MEC for Police Oversight and Community Safety, Anroux Marais, unpacked the Crime Stats for the province at a media briefing on Wednesday.

Patekile said that since 2010, they have not been able to increase their staff establishment to respond to the rapid increase in population in the province.

“For example, semigration and immigration that affects us in the Western Cape, we have not been able to respond in terms of increasing the number of members to respond to the population growth," he told the media.

“Secondly, the attrition and people also going out of the service, looking at greener pastures, is also affecting us. You would realise the fact that we have other local governments, not only the City of Cape Town, poaching from us. Even the private companies are taking from us because we are not matching salaries.

“We started with a R1,000 for the docket carrier a month - you get an additional R1,000, because what we’ve also found is that our members who are working on shifts, they get certain allowances, which the detectives were not getting. 

“Hence, we looked into that for staff retention, and we are hoping that if the budget is increased, which now is getting cut every year, we will be able to look after our detectives.

He said that they have 43 contract detectives, who used to be experienced detectives within SAPS, but then left. 

“We have taken them back for a minimum of two years to take on our cold cases. We are also busy with the re-enlistment of those who want to be permanently employed," he said.

Patekile said that for the last year only they added more than 800 detectives from the police-training Constables, but that means in order “for a detective to be a detective, that requires training for a minimum of two years”. 

“You have the 800-something that must undergo training for the next two years.”

He said that if it were not for the help of the neighbourhood volunteers and the LEAP officers, then they would be feeling things “worse than this”.

In October, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said that City policing resources are increasingly overtaking the police with 560 more City policing vehicles now on the roads compared to SAPS, based on 2025 fleet data.

"Cape Town’s population has expanded rapidly, yet our metro has lost more than 1,300 SAPS officers in just this term of office," the mayor said.

More than one in every four murders recorded in the Western Cape during the latest crime-reporting period was linked to gang initiation or gang-related violence, highlighting the continued grip of organised gangs on violent crime in the province.

According to crime statistics for July to September 2025, 293 murders, 25.3% of the 1 156 killings recorded during the quarter were linked to gang initiation or gang-related violence.

Killings linked to arguments, misunderstandings or fights accounted for 231 murders (20.0%), while retaliation or revenge attacks were responsible for 153 murders (13.2%). Extortion-related murders, though lower in number, accounted for 25 killings, or 2.2%, during the same period.

The burden of gang-related killings remains heavily concentrated in the City of Cape Town. Of the 293 gang-related murders recorded across the Western Cape, 286 occurred in the metro, underscoring the persistent challenges faced by law enforcement and communities in gang-affected areas.

The pattern extends beyond fatal incidents. Police data shows that 302 attempted murders — 26.4% of all attempted murder cases recorded during the quarter were linked to gang initiation or gang-related violence, reinforcing the role of gangs in driving serious violent crime.

In total, the Western Cape recorded 1 160 murders between July and September 2025, an increase of 97 cases, or 9.1%, compared with the same period the previous year. Firearms remained the most frequently used weapons, accounting for 60.6% of all murder cases.

Patekile said police operations during the period had resulted in the arrest of 114 gang leaders and 116 gang members, along with 65 arrests linked to extortion and 125 arrests for kidnapping-related crimes with 1 291 illegal firearms, 32 476 rounds of ammunition and 12 924 dangerous weapons.

Reacting to the crime stats, Marais said: "The crime stats for the first and second quarter of the financial year do not paint an encouraging picture about the crime situation in our province."

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