SONA 2026: Cape Town Mayor urges Ramaphosa to grant City police more powers to fight gangs
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis called on President Ramaphosa during SONA 2026 to grant City police expanded powers to tackle gang, gun, and drug-related crime.
Image: File
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to commit in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) to devolving investigative powers to City police.
Hill-Lewis says the move is critical to combating gang, gun, and drug-related crime in the Western Cape.
“The time has come to end delays in granting more policing powers for City police to help SAPS and the NPA up conviction rates for illegal firearms, drugs, and gang violence cases,” Mayor Hill-Lewis said.
The Mayor highlighted the low conviction rates for cases involving illegal firearms, drugs, and gangs, despite City police confiscating over 450 illegal guns annually.
“There is so much preventable suffering in our gang-impacted communities due to extremely low conviction rates. Our officers already take over 450 illegal guns off the streets per year, but the conviction rate is just 5% in these cases due to the broken criminal justice system and under-resourced SAPS and NPA,” he said.
Hill-Lewis emphasised that City police are ready to support national law enforcement.
“While the Acting Police Minister openly admits that SAPS don’t have the resources to defeat gangs, our well-trained officers stand immediately ready to help SAPS by building prosecution-ready case dockets to up convictions.”
The Mayor criticised delays in processing the City’s proposals for expanded policing powers.
“We have gone as far as submitting draft regulations as part of a public participation process last year, but these are gathering dust on the Acting Police Minister’s desk,” he said.
Alderman JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, warned that national government’s slow response is putting communities at risk.
“The City can no longer wait on national government to adequately resource SAPS or address the massive shortage in detectives or backlogs in forensics; we simply have to be allowed to step in and help do these things if we are to achieve the change we need,” he said.
Smith added that the City has already made substantial contributions to crime reduction.
“In the past four months, the City confiscated 119 illegal firearms, made over 4,500 arrests, and took more than 16,000 units of drugs off the streets. We can go further to build dockets and get convictions in these cases, but the President and Police Minister’s gate-keeping of safety needs to stop.”
The City’s policing resources have also grown substantially in recent years. Between 2021 and 2025, 1,263 new City officers were added to the streets, a 48% increase, while SAPS personnel in the province declined by an estimated 15%.
The City also now has around 560 more policing vehicles on the roads than SAPS, based on 2025 data.
Hill-Lewis said the City will continue pressing for a firm commitment from the President and will pursue legal avenues if necessary.
“We now look to the President for a firm commitment on more metro policing powers and will also look to the courts if needs be,” he said.
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