Police officers in Nelson Mandela Bay are showing up for work only to find broken-down vehicles and equipment so inadequate they must dig into their own pockets to do their jobs, according to findings from a parliamentary oversight visit on Monday, 10 November.
DA MP Ian Cameron, who chairs the Portfolio Committee on Police, led inspections at the SAPS Anti-Gang Unit, Flying Squad and K9 Unit. He was accompanied by DA mayoral candidate Retief Odendaal, local councillors and Shadow MEC for Community Safety Yusuf Cassim.
The city’s Flying Squad, once boasting 15–20 operational vehicles daily, has been reduced to a single van. Meanwhile, 110 Anti-Gang Unit personnel share just four working vehicles and the K9 Unit operates with barely half of its former staff.
Equipment crisis and officer morale
Cameron described the dire state of police resources: “It is critical for police to respond rapidly. This vehicle,” he said, pointing to a BMW SAPS vehicle, “has over 300,000 km on it. It came back from the garage, worked for one shift and doesn’t work anymore.”
He revealed that the Flying Squad “had three incidents that they worked on for an entire weekend. Not because SAPS members don’t want to work—they show up but don’t have vehicles to work with.”
The situation has devastated officer morale. “You can imagine the morale if you show up and don’t have the equipment to do your job. It is ridiculous and not fair,” Cameron said.
Police officers are also increasingly forced to use personal funds, he added.
“Some of the detectives pay money out of their own pockets to safeguard witnesses sometimes, so that the cases can function as they should,” he shared.
Parliamentary response allegedly ignored
The oversight visit findings directly contradict Parliament’s July 2025 resolution, Shadow MEC for Community Safety Yusuf Cassim noted.
“In July 2025, the National Assembly adopted my petition for priority intervention in the Northern Areas’ gang crisis, following my submission to the Portfolio Committee on Police. The resolution specifically directed SAPS to address the collapse of the Anti-Gang Unit and Crime Intelligence in Nelson Mandela Bay,” he shared.
However, considering the dire findings on Monday, those directives have been ignored Cassim explained:
“We just came from the Anti-Gang Unit, where they have 110 Visible Policing Combat members and four operational vehicles that have to operate in Humansdorp, Kamesh and the Northern Areas.”
Meanwhile, ShotSpotter and mobile surveillance systems, meant to aid in firearm and gang detection, have been non-operational for years.
“The Flying Squad, once the city’s rapid-response lifeline, now operates with just one vehicle across the entire metro. The unit has also been without landlines since 2023 due to cable theft.”
At the K9 Unit, staff have been cut from 40 to 22.
“There are only 13 dogs available and only two of those are trained narcotics dogs, severely hampering the fight against substance abuse and gang-related drug crimes. There are also no high-performance vehicles left in service,” said Cassim.
Appeal for urgent intervention
DA mayoral candidate Retief Odendaal described SAPS as “broken” and appealed for national intervention: “In Nelson Mandela Bay, that equates to the loss of life. Every weekend and every day, we see how people are losing their lives.”
Despite the failures, Odendaal praised ground-level police officers: “We’ve just heard how SAPS members often must get into their own private vehicles to attend to work on behalf of SAPS for the public. That is going beyond what is expected of them.”
The DA has requested that Cameron table these findings before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Police and demand urgent national interventions from the Minister of Police.
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