At a meeting of the Western Cape Provincial Safety council this week, Premier Alan Winde brought the serious concerns of thousands of residents directly to South African Police Service (SAPS) Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant-General Thembilsile Patekile and his management team.
The Premier grilled the senior SAPS provincial leadership on the effectiveness of Operation Prosper, crime intelligence and investigations.
“Too many communities are still under siege – enough is enough! Deployments alone are inadequate,” said Premier Winde. “We need consistent, detailed reporting to show whether this intervention is making a real impact. That reporting must then inform immediate adjustments to operations to protect our communities. This operation must not repeat the shortcomings of 2019. It must be intelligence-driven, coordinated, and focused on dismantling criminal networks, especially gangs.”
The council comprises multiple stakeholders, SAPS, municipalities and academic organisations. It provides strategic leadership and oversight of safety and crime prevention efforts, as well as promoting evidence-based decision-making and innovation.
The SAPS delegation told the council that Operation Prosper does include the City of Cape Town’s (CoCT) Law Enforcement. The Premier noted that while this cooperation is encouraging, there must be an increased focus on proactive intelligence-gathering and investigations involving multiple stakeholders. This must be led from the front by SAPS.
The council noted that gangsterism, organised crime and illegal firearms continue to drive the province’s murder rate, underscoring the urgency of a more effective and coordinated response. In a presentation by the CoCT, serious concerns were raised over the low rate of successful prosecutions in fire-arm related offences.
The Western Cape Government is calling for urgent, structural improvements to ensure:
- Adequate resourcing of SAPS in the province
- Thorough and professional investigations
- Court-ready, evidence-based case building
- Higher prosecution success rates
Council members also called for SAPS to establish a task force that focuses specifically on crimes involving illegal firearms, which the Western Cape Government supports. In terms of illegal firearm cases, if the investigation, forensic and prosecution flow becomes more efficient, more prosecutions will follow. SAPS needs to act on this request.
Premier Winde stated, “We are committed to helping and working with SAPS. But we need granular, transparent data to determine whether Operation Prosper represents a genuine shift in strategy, or simply a repetition of past approaches that failed to deliver long-term results. We cannot simply recycle the same crime-fighting measures if bullets are still flying and there is no meaningful difference in communities’ lives.”
Earlier in the week, Western Cape Minister of Police Oversight and Community safety, Anroux Marais, met with Lieutenant-General Patekile and his management team to obtain further detail on the approach underpinning Operation Prosper. During the engagement, Minister Marais expressed concern over the continued spike in violence and killings since 1 April 2026 in SANDF deployment areas, despite the presence of the military. She stressed the critical need for actionable intelligence and a coordinated operational plan that goes beyond visibility, focusing on the confiscation of illegal firearms and the dismantling of gang networks.
Lieutenant-General Patekile acknowledged initial teething challenges with Operation Prosper, indicating that these are being addressed. Following the meeting, Minister Marais conducted an oversight visit to Luzuko, where she voiced her frustration after observing only a single SANDF vehicle supporting SAPS operations.
