In a direct appeal to national government, Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has formally requested that cell phone signals be blocked inside Pollsmoor Prison, citing alarming reports that incarcerated gangsters are using mobile devices to coordinate extortion and other serious crimes from their cells.
The Mayor confirmed he has written to the national Correctional Services Minister, Peter Groenewald, urging the implementation of signal-jamming technology and other security upgrades. The move comes as the city grapples with what the Mayor describes as a broader organized crime problem.
The call for action was prompted by a specific, chilling incident. Mayor Hill-Lewis recounted visiting a road construction project in the community of Bishop Lavis, where the contractor refused to continue work after receiving a call from a well-known gangster inside Pollsmoor.
“He said to me that he had received a cell phone call from inside Pollsmoor Prison from a well-known Cape Town gangster who’s serving time for serious crimes who said to him that he better get his guys off the work site because this particular work site belongs to him… and that he would not survive the day,” the Mayor stated.
He expressed outrage that convicted criminals can continue to run their illegal operations from behind bars, calling it a “mockery of our criminal justice system.” Upon investigation, the Mayor said he was told by police that cell phone smuggling into the facility is “very frequent” and that there is currently little that can be done to stop it.
Alongside the proposal for signal jamming, Mayor Hill-Lewis is also calling for lifestyle audits of correctional services wardens, suggesting complicity from within the prison system.
Addressing potential challenges with the jamming proposal, the Mayor acknowledged that Pollsmoor’s unique location, adjacent to residential communities, requires a careful approach. He suggested the technology could be calibrated to target only specific maximum-security cell blocks to avoid disrupting public networks. He also conceded that determined criminals might find ways around the measure, but argued that the goal is to make their operations more difficult.
“This is certainly not going to be a silver bullet. It will not solve the issue, but it will make it harder. And I think we should try everything that we can to frustrate the lives and the organized crime business of these gangsters,” Hill-Lewis said.
When confronted with the assertion that criminals remain “one step ahead” of authorities, the Mayor agreed, pointing to systemic failures across the criminal justice chain. He highlighted “very low conviction rates,” failed investigations, and a “collapse of our criminal intelligence service” as key issues hampering efforts.
To address the wider crime crisis, the Mayor outlined several city-led initiatives, including a request for greater investigative powers for its Metro Police to ensure illegal firearms cases lead to convictions. He also noted the city has deployed 700 additional Metro Police officers in recent months to bolster visibility.
In a separate but related development, the Mayor confirmed that a major raid on 26 properties in Cape Town was connected to a tender fraud investigation. The probe, reportedly involving R1.6 billion, was initiated by the city. Mayor Hill-Lewis credited City Manager Lungelo Mbandazayo with leading the internal fight against corruption. He confirmed the investigation involves officials in the city’s Urban Mobility and Urban Waste Management departments and pledged the city’s full cooperation with the South African Police Service.
