CAPE TOWN, Western Cape — A deepening political rift over Cape Town policing devolution has erupted into a formal intergovernmental dispute, with the African National Congress (ANC) sharply criticizing the municipality’s push to expand Metro Police powers. While local leadership argues that municipal officers need independent investigative authority to combat rampant crime, the opposition views the maneuver as a premature and unconstitutional distraction from core service delivery failures.
The conflict centers on the city’s formal declaration of an intergovernmental dispute following years of stalled requests to the national government. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has publicly branded Pretoria’s refusal to hand over policing powers as both irrational and unconstitutional. The municipal government’s primary grievance revolves around evidence handling and docket management: local officers who confiscate illegal firearms are currently forced to hand them over to the South African Police Service (SAPS). City officials argue that allowing Metro Police to build and manage these criminal cases independently would drastically improve conviction rates and prevent investigations from stalling in the national system.
However, ANC Western Cape convenor Jeremiah Thyssen has vehemently rejected the municipality’s legal posturing, framing it as a direct contradiction of South Africa’s unitary state model. According to Thyssen, the 1996 Constitution deliberately centralizes criminal investigations and overarching policing responsibilities within the national sphere—specifically SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). He warned that attempting to rewrite these jurisdictional lines “willy-nilly” to suit a local political agenda would transform eager municipalities into “constitutional delinquents.”
Thyssen emphasized that bypassing the Government of National Unity (GNU) to declare an intergovernmental dispute severely damages the fragile framework of cooperative governance. Rather than dragging the national government to court—a move he argues exposes national unity to unnecessary constitutional friction—he insisted the Democratic Alliance (DA)-led city should engage the Minister of Police through established GNU channels to address operational gaps. Highlighting the daily violence plaguing communities across the Cape Flats, Thyssen stated that law enforcement agencies must collaborate, warning that leaders “can’t play political games with our people’s lives.”
Addressing the argument that local control yields better resource management, the ANC spokesperson noted that national SAPS funding is already distributed to provinces on a per capita basis. He challenged the city to define exactly what investigative functions SAPS is neglecting that a municipal force could execute better. Furthermore, Thyssen pivoted the blame back to the municipality’s actual constitutional mandates, arguing that sustainable crime prevention relies heavily on urban management and housing delivery.
He pointed out that the city should focus on building social housing to “decant” overcrowded informal settlements, thereby improving physical access and mobility for law enforcement in high-crime zones. Instead of demanding new policing mandates, Thyssen argued the city needs to stop returning allocated housing funds to the treasury and focus on spatial planning that brings residents closer to economic opportunities. He also urged the municipality to partner with the Department of Labor to implement youth activation and employment programs, asserting that “policing is a response to crime” rather than a cure for its socioeconomic root causes.
Ultimately, the ANC dismissed the entire devolution campaign as a strategic, election-year sound bite. Thyssen alleged that the aggressive push for Metro Police powers is a smokescreen designed to help the DA recover public favor following recent stinging administrative and legal defeats. He cited adverse Constitutional Court rulings regarding the controversial Tafelberg housing site—where the city was criticized for failing to utilize the land for social housing decanting—as well as harsh Public Protector reports detailing poor municipal service delivery in local townships. By making sweeping promises to gang-afflicted areas, Thyssen concluded, the city is offering an inauthentic political narrative rather than confronting its own developmental shortcomings.
