CAPE TOWN – The presence of United States Marines training Cape Town Metro Police cadets from the City of Cape Town’s Public Safety Training College (PTSC) on Muizenberg Beach has sparked political debate, with questions being raised about the legality and oversight of the arrangement.

The City says the event was a once-off “fitness exercise” with the Marines based at the US Consulate in Cape Town and was a fitness exercise and an “opportunity for officers to experience Marine-style fitness drills.”

“The City has, in recent years, as part of its expansion of the PSTC, started placing a stronger emphasis on physical fitness of enforcement services, with ongoing assessments of all levels of staff,” said the City’s mayco member for safety and security, JP Smith.

The engagement with the Marines was “an informal arrangement where staff could measure their fitness standards against that of another entity,” added Smith.

“It was not a formal training engagement and there was no cost involved to the City as the Marines are based in Cape Town, at their Consulate. It must be noted that the City has engaged with cities and governments across the world to learn about, or identify ways in which we are able to improve our own abilities,” he said.

Smith noted that the City has held similar engagements in recent years, such as: hosting a training course in April 2024 on cyber forensics for first responders, that was presented by experts in the field from France and Australia and a multi-agency workshop in February 2023 on kidnapping and extortion, presented by representatives from the UK and US, including the FBI.

However, the news of the exercise should not merely be “brushed off as a simple ‘fitness session’ and “raises serious legal, governance and accountability concerns,” said GOOD City of Cape Town councillor Jonathan Cupido.

“Municipal policing in South Africa is not a free-for-all. The Constitution is clear that municipal police services must operate within a national legislative framework, and the South African Police Service Act makes it equally clear that the National Commissioner determines the standards and training applicable to municipal police. The City does not have the authority to improvise training arrangements outside of that framework,” Cupido said.

He feels the City has many questions to answer if this exercise could become an “international cooperation”.

“Under what legal authority were US Marines involved in training a municipal police service? Was this authorised or approved by the National Commissioner of Saps? Was this strictly limited to physical training, or did it extend into policing functions? What agreement governs this “international cooperation”, and what are its terms?,” Cupido said.

He adds that “Cape Town already has accredited training structures for its law enforcement and Metro Police.”

“If the City now requires foreign military involvement to train its officers, then something is fundamentally wrong with its own systems. More importantly, this creates a dangerous blurring of lines between military structures and civilian policing, something our constitutional framework is deliberately designed to prevent.

“Residents are not asking for beach drills and PR moments. They are asking for safer communities, visible policing, functioning investigations and real consequences for criminals,” he said.

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