This speech was delivered by GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament Brett Herron during yesterday’s Statement to the House:
A recent surge in the number of gang-related crimes led to a flurry of pronouncements by top police brass this week, including an admission by the Acting Minister that the police had no coherent plan to stop it.
What was strikingly absent was any discussion about addressing dysfunctional social environments; about the roles the Departments of Social Development, Education and Sport, the City of Cape Town and Western Cape Province should be playing to fix the fabric of communities.
The level of dysfunctionality was recently illustrated by an MP who felt it necessary to carry a gun on an oversight visit to a Cape Town township and was then called to use it when his car came under attack. On social media, someone identifying as George stated, “If you think you can drive around in a Black area without your weapon today you are surely the dumbest idiot on earth.”
Last week, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime published the sixth issue of its quarterly Western Cape Gang Monitor. The monitor included a graph in the frequency of gang-related murders in the Western Cape from 2020 to the first quarter of this year. The number of deaths more than doubled from 422 in 2020 to 872 in 2024, with the first quarter of 2025 continuing the upward trend.
The same issue of the monitor reports that fragmentation of Western Cape gangs has increased significantly, with the number of gangs constantly in flux. “Splits increase the count as each breakaway forms a new entity with a leadership structure, identity and activities.”
The idea, repeated by the Acting Minister this week, that it is the police who should bear responsibility for this mess, is a political charade much favoured by Western Cape and City of Cape Town politicians who repeatedly say the solution is to devolve policing powers to them.
While the police may receive credit for reductions in the crime stats, should such occur, the broken communities that act as conveyor belts for crime must be credited to local and provincial authorities.
The role of the police is both to prevent crime, through intelligence gathering and community engagement, and to arrest criminals. But it is society’s role to develop children, steer them through social difficulties, and create opportunities that reduce the allure of associating with criminals.
In Cape Town, a teenager from the suburbs who experiments with drugs or develops a taste for alcohol is often identified at school, which triggers various psycho-social interventions to get back on track. A similarly experimental teenager from Hanover Park or Khayelitsha is more likely to become a crime statistic.
Western Cape gangsters are hiding in plain sight, but because the fabric of communities is so threadbare, and there’s no relationship between local authorities and local communities, the value of local intelligence is lost.
Instead of lining up with his generals to face the media this week, Acting Minister Professor Firoz Cachalia would have done well to invite the Premier, Mayor and his Cabinet colleagues from Basic Education and Social Development.
Sure, we need better policing, including better crime intelligence, but so too must the State deliver on its Constitutional obligations to develop children with higher self-esteem and better prospects.
If we leave it to the police to wage war against gangs the war will continuously be lost.
GOOD Manifesto on Youth Empowerment: A strong focus on empowering the youth through education and job opportunities.
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