Deadly guns and gangs combo still plagues the Western Cape

Compiled from quarterly SAPS crime statistics presentation with the sample size: murder = 5,596 counts.

8 Sep 2024

Of the 270 gang-related murders recorded in SA over three months, 234 were in the Western Cape. The latest data also points to controversies that connect cop and gun issues to gang hot spots.

The Western Cape remains South Africa’s most violent and deadly province in terms of gangsterism. And this is not a perception – it is based on the latest quarterly South African Police Service (SAPS) crime statistics, which cover the three months from April to June this year and were officially released last week.

When he released the figures, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu noted that the Western Cape had recorded the highest increase in murder cases.

Among the Western Cape police stations that stand out in the statistics is one in the Cape Town suburb of Mitchells Plain, parts of which are gang strongholds.

This week, speaking to Daily Maverick about the situation in Mitchells Plain, Lynn Phillips from the Cape Flats Safety Forum said gang violence there was “a sad reality”.

“Some community members have become … silent for fear that [their] lives and [those] of their family members might become another statistic due to this continuous gun violence and [we] deem [these] senseless killings, all because of greed [over] drug turf,” she said.

Read more: Vandals, escalating gang violence see Cape Town sports field transformed into battleground

Based on the quarterly crime statistics, Mitchells Plain was twelfth out of the 30 police stations in the country with the highest murder toll – 43 were recorded there.

https://www.youtube.com/live/gX_cw1CsWF0?feature=shared

The police station with the highest murder toll – at 79 – was Nyanga in Cape Town. It was followed by Inanda at 76 and Umlazi at 71, both in KwaZulu-Natal.

Read more: Taxi bosses, construction mafia and political murder: The violence entrepreneurs challenging business and the state

Gang killing epicentre

Two hundred and seventy of the total 6,198 murders in the country were gang-related. According to the SAPS statistics, of those gang killings the majority – 234 – were in the Western Cape, 21 were in Gauteng, 13 in the Eastern Cape and two in North West.

There were 373 gang-related attempted murders across the country between April and June, and again the clear majority – 334 – were in the Western Cape.

Of the 2,686 firearm murders across the country between April and June this year, KwaZulu-Natal was first with 746 incidents and the Western Cape was second with 655. Gauteng came in third with 524 and the Eastern Cape was fourth with 467.

This is where matters loop back to the Western Cape – and to specific suburbs, including Mitchells Plain.

Gun problems have rocked the province before. South Africa’s biggest firearm smuggling investigation codenamed Project Impi previously culminated in the arrest and conviction of Chris Prinsloo, now a former colonel, who confessed to selling firearms that were meant to have been destroyed.

Some of these weapons allegedly ended up with gangsters in the Western Cape and were used in more than 1,500 killings.

Crime stats Compiled from quarterly SAPS crime statistics presentation with the sample size: murder = 5,596 counts.

Read more: Guns to gangs: ’Prove our stolen firearms were used in killings’, says cop boss

That scandal has become the basis of an attempted class action lawsuit being driven against police.

The Mitchells Plain police station has also experienced gun problems. Fifteen firearms linked to it went missing in about November 2023. Daily Maverick previously reported on this, and that five police officers were dismissed in connection with the saga.

It was something of a repeat scenario. About seven years ago, 15 handguns also went missing from the Mitchells Plain station’s community service centre, and a group of police officers faced action, including suspensions and dismissals. They were all later cleared of wrongdoing.

Read more: Cop arrest and transfer after repeat ‘missing’ guns scandal at Cape Town gang hotspot police station

Arming assassins?

This week Phillips referenced these two cases and said such issues led to questions of whether a syndicate or syndicates, tied to policing, were trying to get hold of firearms in areas including Mitchells Plain.

“Is this a deliberate attempt to arm gangsters to create organised chaos in our communities?” she asked. Even if that were not the case, Phillips said it created distrust between residents and police.

Read more: Minister Mchunu’s grim SA crime stats after WC police shootout call for urgent action on extortion, murder, kidnapping rates

The Mitchells Plain police station features several times in the crime statistics released last week. For example, it recorded the highest number of malicious damage to property charges (205) and the most drug-related charges – 1,202 of them – in SA between April and June this year.

The Mitchells Plain police station was also number one in SA in terms of the number of crimes “detected as a result of police action” – 1,266. It also recorded the highest number of illegal possession of firearm and ammunition charges countrywide – 53 of them.

So, at the police station where officers faced internal action over firearms that went missing which is situated in a Cape Town suburb where parts are known to be drug and gang hot spots, the most drug-related charges and crimes detected because of cop work have been recorded.

These issues – especially the firearms scandals, which appear to have involved cop corruption, versus the highest number of crimes detected because of police work – seem contradictory.

Read more: Cops can’t be trusted to turn around SA’s decades-old trajectory of firearm control failures – new report

This week Phillips said that specialised officers needed to focus on getting illegal firearms and ammunition off the streets. She hoped suspected gang leaders’ cellphone data was being retrieved, as she was sure it would expose how deep-rooted illegal firearm chains were.

Last week the national and provincial government, along with the City of Cape Town, signed what the Presidency labelled a “cooperation agreement for safety and policing”.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, talking about it, said: “Die mense van Kaapstad is moeg vir die gangsters. (The people of Cape Town are tired of the gangsters.)

https://youtu.be/5__ladWeTPo?si=7D7yMhL38gd7q0Yh&sfnsn=scwspmo

“Businesses are tired of being forced to pay protection fees, and of being under siege from criminals who are destroying their livelihoods.”

Ramaphosa added that the cooperation agreement would involve sharing technology, resources and information.

“By drawing on each other’s expertise, we will be able to do much more than if we were each working alone. This is an approach that we are taking across the country.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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