Cape Town’s municipal policing is rapidly overtaking the South African Police Service (SAPS) in resources and personnel, with the city now deploying 560 more police vehicles on its streets than the national force, according to new fleet data released by Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
The stark disparity has emerged as Cape Town has expanded its policing capacity by 48% since 2021, adding 1,263 new officers to reach a total force of 3,883 personnel. Over the same period, SAPS has shed an estimated 1,300 officers in the city – a 15% decline that has left the national police service with just 7,355 active duty officers in Cape Town.
Speaking to the City Council, Hill-Lewis warned that the metro is approaching an “unacceptable scenario” where a municipal support agency has more resources than the country’s primary crime-fighting force.
“Cape Town’s population has expanded rapidly, yet our metro has lost more than 1,300 SAPS officers in just this term of office,” Hill-Lewis said. “This is unthinkable given the violent crime facing our communities, where not a week goes by without a terrible new example of innocent people, and often young children, killed by warring gang members.”
Fleet and personnel gaps widen
Current data shows the City’s police fleet maintains a 90.6% operational rate, with approximately 2,179 vehicles actively patrolling streets. This compares to SAPS’s 1,619 operational vehicles, according to recent parliamentary responses.
The personnel crisis is particularly acute at station level, where SAPS vacancy rates across most Cape Town precincts range from 20% to 40%. The force also has 200 vacant detective positions as of August 2025.
In contrast, Cape Town completed its largest policing investment in over a decade this year, adding more than 700 new officers alone in 2025. The expansion includes neighbourhood policing in every ward for the first time and enhanced security for the N2 highway.
Push for investigation powers
Hill-Lewis has renewed calls for Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia to grant municipal officers crime investigation powers, arguing this would significantly improve conviction rates. Currently, City officers can arrest suspects and confiscate weapons but cannot investigate crimes or build prosecution-ready case files.
“City officers are increasingly taking more guns and drugs off the streets, but the problem remains the conviction rate, which sits at just 5% for the 400 illegal firearms City officers confiscate annually,” the mayor explained.
The low conviction rate stems from what Hill-Lewis described as “our broken criminal justice system and under-resourced SAPS and NPA [National Prosecuting Authority].”
System under strain
Safety and Security Mayoral Committee Member JP Smith highlighted testimony from the ongoing Madlanga Commission, which exposed critical shortages in SAPS’s ballistics and forensic divisions.
“SAPS’s own expert confirmed he sits with 29,000 firearms at any given time, showing how critically under-resourced SAPS are to conclude investigations and gain convictions,” Smith said.
The mayor drew parallels between SAPS and other failing state entities, saying the police service had become “the new Eskom, the new PRASA, and the new Transnet, all rolled into one.”
“But allowing the collapse of SAPS will have far more devastating consequences than load-shedding or broken trains,” Hill-Lewis warned. “It simply must be fixed because this is people’s lives at stake, and the rule of law itself.”
Technology investment
Cape Town is also rolling out major safety technology upgrades across its policing services, including dashboard cameras, body cameras, CCTV systems, gunshot detection, and licence plate recognition capabilities.
The City’s expansion builds on the successful Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) initiative, developed in partnership with the Western Cape Government to boost policing resources in the province’s most vulnerable communities.
Hill-Lewis said the municipality has “directed billions of precious ratepayers’ rands towards safety and security interventions” while fulfilling election promises to add “hundreds more boots on the ground.”
The mayor has written to Cachalia urging him to expedite regulations that would devolve greater policing powers to municipal officers, particularly for gang, gun, and drug-related offences that plague Cape Town’s communities.
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