CAPE TOWN — Cape Town municipal workers are facing escalating dangers from gang activity and violent crime, leading to a massive surge in security escort requests. According to city officials, this sharp increase underscores a severe crisis for essential service delivery in the region, prompting local government to take drastic financial and legal measures to protect its staff.
A Surge in Escort Requests and Financial Strain
Over the past 12 months, the City of Cape Town’s Law Enforcement Escort Unit responded to more than 10,700 requests to protect municipal staff and contractors operating in high-risk areas.
Alderman JP Smith, the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, revealed that escort requests have nearly tripled in a single year, jumping from approximately 275 to 890 per month. To cope with the demand, the City Manager insourced an additional R100 million from the private security budget to fund internal enforcement staff, including City Law Enforcement and Metro Police.
Despite this massive financial injection, Smith notes that the burden is already “past unsustainable.” He explained that the heightened security needs coincide with a massive capital infrastructure investment by the City—which he stated exceeds the combined budgets of other metros like eThekwini. Much of this development occurs in high-risk zones plagued by extortion syndicates, forcing the municipality to continuously securitize service delivery because the national criminal justice system is failing to convict the attackers.
Emergency Services in the Crosshairs
The violence disproportionately affects emergency workers, who are frequently targeted while performing their duties. Smith highlighted that fire engines and ambulances are often attacked, sometimes resulting in damaged vehicles and traumatized staff.
Because of the danger, paramedics operating in “red zones” increasingly refuse to respond without a police escort. This reliance on law enforcement for safe passage critically delays emergency response times and puts pressure on adjacent fire and medical stations.
To combat the theft of city assets, the municipality has also launched a dedicated anti-hijacking unit within its Metro Police. Initially created to protect valuable city minibuses, the unit now frequently recovers hijacked private vehicles in hotspots like Khayelitsha and Delft, where dismantled cars are often hidden in informal settlements.
The Push for the Devolution of Police Powers
In response to the national police service’s inability to curb these extortion syndicates, Smith is strongly advocating for the devolution of police powers to local government.
He dismissed national government warnings that devolution would create “two-tier cities” and marginalize vulnerable communities as “self-evident nonsense.” Smith argued that every municipality across the country is facing the same crisis of an under-resourced national detective service and poor conviction rates for serious crimes.
Arguing that policing operates as a local or regional competency in most of the world, Smith stated that the City is unapologetically hiring more investigative and crime analysis staff to drive information-driven policing. Furthermore, he announced that the Mayor is initiating litigation to compel the national government to consider devolving these powers, asserting that the current centralized approach is unreasonable and not in the public interest.
