Reality check – yes, Western Cape community safety MEC Anroux Marais, gang violence is out of control

‘We see blood flowing down our streets daily for so long now.”

If you try to unravel gang violence in the Western Cape, you will hear sentences like that, and about how children are forced to dodge bullets on playgrounds.

Western Cape community safety MEC Anroux Marais. (Photo: Mark Ward / Gallo Images)

You may even witness shootings and see horrific aftermath photographs, and you will be sent panicked voice notes about what gangsters are up to. 

You may go to murder scenes and funerals. And you will grasp that gang-inflicted terror and trauma are ongoing – generational.

SA’s gang epicentre

Violence in the Western Cape persists and that is why the province retains the notorious title of South Africa’s gangsterism capital.

Based on the latest officially released South African Police Service (SAPS) crime statistics, of 221 gang-related murders in the country between July and September 2024, 177 were in the Western Cape.

This means an average of 59 people were murdered monthly, and two per day, in gang incidents.

While this article was being typed, reports came in of a shooting in Valhalla Park, a Cape Town suburb of which parts are 28s gang strongholds.

Daily Maverick has previously detailed instances where there have been an extreme number of killings over 24 hours.

Read more: Beneath politicking — ‘31 murders’ in Western Cape over a day ahead of SA’s biggest elections

In May, we reported that 31 people had been killed over a weekend, explaining that “the number of murders in the Western Cape over a day recently just about exceeds the number of years South Africa has been a democracy”.

Back to gang violence specifically.

When looking at murder statistics, it can be easy to forget that each number usually represents not just one, but several, lives.

The person killed and those the bloodshed affects.

This includes children.

‘I wouldn’t say it’s out of control’

So, this weekend, when the Sunday Times published questions and answers with the Western Cape’s Police Oversight and Community Safety MEC Anroux Marais, it was concerning to see her response when asked if gang violence in the province was out of control.

Manenberg, Cape Town, 19 June 2019. (Photo: Brenton Geach / Gallo)

She replied: “I wouldn’t say it’s out of control. It just seems out of control because of key people being killed, like gang leader Mark Lifman.”

Lifman is the murder accused who was fatally shot in the Western Cape town of George on 3 November.

Read more: Gangstas’ Paradise – how the ‘bullet rule’ of gangsters is strangling the life out of SA’s Mother City

A follow-up question from the Sunday Times’ Chris Barron to Marais challenged her reply about gang violence.

He asked that if it was under control, how she could explain that of 270 gang-related murders in South Africa over three months, 234 happened in the Western Cape. (Daily Maverick previously reported on these figures from the SAPS’s official crime statistics covering April to June this year.)

In response to Barron, Marais gave no explanation and simply said: “Yes, that’s true.”

Read more: How Cape Town’s bloody gang scourge creeps into the city amid surge in deadly shootings

She responded to other questions, also saying it was hoped the SAPS, City of Cape Town, provincial and national government “will now work together instead of against each other”.

Devastating reality

Marais’s stance, as the Sunday Times published, is that gang violence only seems out of control because of high-profile individuals, “like gang leader Mark Lifman”, being killed.

This response does not seem to connect to what is happening on the ground and it seems void of understanding the intense and lingering impact of shootings.

High-profile killings do indeed garner more media attention.

https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/48aa12441f08a01f2671dadae3cb171a/snapshot-of-cape-town-s-deadly-organised-crime/index.html

But the reality is that gang violence is far more expansive than prominent cases and what is reported on.

Aside from shootings in which people are wounded or killed, there are also shootings in which bullets miss individuals – but the intent and the violence is still present.

So too is the trauma associated with gang battles.

If the violence was indeed under control as Marais suggested, there would not be constant police interventions to try and thoroughly crack down on the problem, or, as some will undoubtedly call it, the crisis. (Read News24’s report Cape Town’s children – a generation at gang gunpoint.)

On Tuesday, 17 December 2024, when Daily Maverick asked Marais to confirm her response to the Sunday Times and elaborate on her view that gang violence simply seemed to be out of control, she sent a lengthy reply.

She did not confirm her Sunday Times response, but emphasised that gangsterism was a generational problem.

Marais also pointed out an issue that Western Cape crime and politics consistently produce, “that policing is a national government competence”.

‘A personal concern to me’

In her response to Daily Maverick, she said: “Gang violence is a lived reality and a daily concern to me personally.

“Gangsterism is the toughest generational problem which we are doing our very best to combat every day.”

She again referred to Lifman’s murder, telling Daily Maverick: “What I want to point out was that a current contributor to gang-related violence is the phenomenon of less prominent gangsters trying to fill the void left by the death of Mark Lifman and the arrest of a variety of high-profile people whose cases are currently before the courts.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfDvYnjikCY

Lifman was murdered in November and while there were concerns about retaliatory violence, no subsequent shootings have since been publicly linked to that incident.

And while certain arrests can spark further battles, as Marais points out, gang violence is far more widespread and intricate.

In her response to Daily Maverick, she referred to some gangsterism history.

“The roots of gangsterism in the Western Cape are deep, going back many decades,” she said.

“The effects were worsened by the effects of apartheid on specifically African and coloured communities, creating a societal powder keg on the Cape Flats.”

‘We see blood daily’

In the Western Cape, gang violence is indeed concentrated in historically poorer suburbs known as the Cape Flats, where “non-white” residents were forced to live under apartheid’s Group Areas Act.

Some forcibly displaced residents tried to find acceptance and belonging – in criminal groups.

While home to countless residents not involved in gangsterism, those suburbs are still gang violence hotspots.

On Tuesday, the Cape Flats Safety Forum’s secretary Lynn Phillips told Daily Maverick that Marais’s take on the issue, as published in the Sunday Times, did not seem based on what was actually happening in Cape Town.

Phillips had heard about shootings that happened over the past few days in the Cape Town suburb of Mitchells Plain.

“I feel the MEC is not in touch with our reality on the Cape Flats,” she said.

“We see blood flowing down our streets daily for so long now”.

Read more: Cape Flats families bury their children on Youth Day

Phillips said Marais did not live on the Cape Flats and was not seeing and hearing what residents there did.

“Maybe she only sees gun violence when she switches on Netflix. 

“Our kids live this reality on the Cape Flats. They are constantly traumatised and for … years it’s affected our kids en route to school, in the school, and even at home,” Phillips said.

“They don’t have the freedom to go to a shop without being caught in the crossfire, or [to] play with friends in their yard because they constantly have to make sure no gang violence will erupt...

“So, seriously, whoever is the MEC’s personal adviser must come out of their aircon offices [and] experience what our kids experience daily.”

Read more: All I want for Christmas: Cape Town kids ask police chief, Ramaphosa for gang-free suburbs

Phillips referred to a safety forum event, held with Gun Free South Africa over the weekend in Mitchells Plain.

“We sent a stern message to gang leaders to tell their soldiers our kids want to have a joyous festive season, and we are taking back our parks [from them] for our kids to be kids.”

Flashpoints of deep criminality

While gang shootings are concentrated in certain areas, the violence has no borders and gangsterism is a noxious matrix that involves more than pulling triggers.

Shootings can be the flashpoints of deep-rooted and overlapping organised crime.

Daily Maverick has previously reported on how there were suspicions, in some instances confirmation, of gangsters and crime accused in the Western Cape being involved in an array of sectors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGJQ2DYAgjw

This included running private security companies, violently muscling in on construction sites and extorting businesspeople, and connections to entertainment venues.

There are also constant suspicions of collusion between gangsters and figures in private businesses and government.

On Tuesday, in her response to Daily Maverick and of her own accord, Marais acknowledged that “gangsterism is intertwined with just about every crime in the Western Cape, because over decades it has become endemic.”

She added: “That means we have to fight it with everything we have, which we do.”

A solution to curb gangsterism, Marais said, was improved economic activity.

“People must understand and experience that legitimate economic activity is a better option than gangs, and that gangsterism has grim consequences.”

Politics, the arena in which Marais operates, is also a factor that shapes gangsterism.

Political wills

Before she headed the Western Cape community safety portfolio, she was the DA’s cultural affairs and sport MEC.

In terms of national politics, before the country’s Government of National Unity (GNU) was created earlier this year, the ANC was the ruling party under whose auspices the SAPS fell.

A police officer keeps watch from inside his vehicle. Many residents are afraid to leave their homes at night due to gang violence. (Photo: Shiraaz Mohamed)

This had resulted in tit-for-tat sparring between the ANC and the opposition DA-run City of Cape Town which has a metro police service.

That sparring went along the lines of the DA accusing the ANC of failing to ensure effective policing – and the ANC rebutting that the DA needed to pull its weight.

Read more: DA’s Geordin Hill-Lewis takes over Cape Town’s mayoral chain — and inherits party political spat over policing

The ANC and DA are now among the political parties making up South Africa’s GNU. Its police minister is the ANC’s Senzo Mchunu.

In August, a memorandum of understanding, or cooperation agreement, was signed between the SAPS and the City of Cape Town.

At the time, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “We are bringing together national, provincial and local government, the SAPS, the City of Cape Town, community organisations and private security companies.”

Marais had also reacted, at that point saying: “Our people suffer at the hands of murderers, gangsters, robbers, rapists, hijackers and every other type of criminal.

“Crime can only be beaten if we all work together”.

It can also only be beaten if those in positions that give them even a semblance of crimefighting clout properly understand it.

Introspection

On Tuesday, in her lengthy reply to Daily Maverick, Marais began with the issue that has before caused political finger-pointing – that policing is a national government competence.

“But because it is such a major concern and has such an impact on our residents we have stepped in where we can to support national government law enforcement agencies, like the SAPS,” she said.

“Our efforts target the worst affected areas through a data and evidence-led approach.”

Marais continued: “We have made it very clear that we want to work with national government and other spheres of government like municipalities to deal with the scourge of gangsterism. 

“We have actively campaigned for policing to be devolved to competent governments, like ours, because we believe that we can make a difference.”

Read more: City of Collusion — the gang suspects and ex-officials accused of crafting Cape Town’s real ‘construction mafia’

Gang suspicions, meanwhile, have crept into political parties.

In September 2024, Malusi Booi, the former DA mayoral committee member for human settlements in the City of Cape Town, was arrested. 

He is accused of being involved in a tenders-for-cash enterprise involving more than R1-billion, which the State alleges was headed by alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield and his wife Nicole Johnson.

Booi has not yet pleaded in that case.

Neither have Stanfield and Johnson in the separate case in which they are charged, which grew significantly this year.

Some of the charges against the couple’s co-accused in that case connect to the February 2023 murder of City of Cape Town staff member Wendy Kloppers, who was shot at a housing development site in Delft, apparently after she refused to give in to gangsters’ demands.

Read more: 28s gang ‘captures’ top Western Cape cops; prosecutors’ lives at risk – judge sounds corruption alarm

Daily Maverick previously reported on another case involving a landmark judgment in October 2022 by Judge Daniel Thulare.

He had boldly warned that there was evidence suggesting that gangsters and police officers were colluding in the Western Cape.

Gang collusion suspicions and accusations extend from the national and provincial levels to the municipal.

Surrounding those suspicions and accusations is a grim reality in which many people, children included, are among those who must dodge bullets to survive.

The gang murder toll from the Western Cape underscores this.

While Marais provided detailed input about how to tackle gangsterism and related challenges, in her 592-word response to Daily Maverick on Tuesday, she did not directly address her stance as published in the Sunday Times – that gang violence “just seems out of control because of key people being killed, like gang leader Mark Lifman”.

Gang violence should, at the very least, be properly acknowledged because of the number of people trying to survive amid it – and the number of lives it consistently claims. DM

Read Marais’ full response to Daily Maverick: 

It is important to state upfront that policing is a national government competence, but because it is such a major concern and has such an impact on our residents we have stepped in where we can to support national government law enforcement agencies, like the SAPS. Our efforts target the worst affected areas through a data and evidence-led approach.

We have made it very clear that we want to work with national government and other spheres of government like municipalities to deal with the scourge of gangsterism. We have actively campaigned for policing to be devolved to competent governments, like ours, because we believe that we can make a difference.

We also need to work closely with the National Prosecuting Authority to ensure that the justice system works more efficiently.

Gang violence is a lived reality and a daily concern to me personally. Gangsterism is the toughest generational problem which we are doing our very best to combat every day. We do register successes for which SAPS, our LEAP officers and the law enforcement officers of the City of Cape Town deserve credit. It is a tough, grim battle but we are persevering. The recent signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Cape Town, SAPS and the Western Cape Government is one example of our joint efforts to tackle this scourge.

What I want to point out was that a current contributor to gang-related violence is the phenomenon of less prominent gangsters trying to fill the void left by the death of Mark Lifman and the arrest of a variety of high profile people whose cases are currently before the courts.

We are doing our best to root out gangsterism, which contributed 17% to the Western Cape murder figure according to the latest quarterly crime statistics.

The roots of gangsterism in the Western Cape are deep, going back many decades. The effects were worsened by the effects of apartheid on specifically African and Coloured communities, creating a societal powder keg on the Cape Flats. Gangsterism is intertwined with just about every crime in the Western Cape, because over decades it has become endemic. That means we have to fight it with everything we have, which we do.

In this, we follow a whole of society approach, which includes the Department of Police Oversight and Community Safety, the Department of Education, the Department of Social Development and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, among others in the Western Cape Government. The only solution is through improved economic activity, to which better education and employment opportunities, as well as keeping our youth off the streets, must be key. People must understand and experience that legitimate economic activity is a better option than gangs, and that gangsterism has grim consequences.

Even though policing is a national government competence, the Western Cape Government is assisting, to the best of its ability within a limited budget, where the national government and SAPS are struggling.

From the side of the Western Cape Government, we fund the Law Enforcement Acceleration Plan (LEAP), which places about a thousand extra boots on the ground in Cape Town’s six worst crime hotspots, namely Mitchells Plain, Delft, Nyanga, Philippi East, Khayelitsha and Gugulethu. There is also a rapid response unit which responds to any flare-up elsewhere in the Cape Metro.

I will continue to work with every SAPS, LEAP and Metro Police member, every Neighbourhood Watch member, every Community Policing Forum member and every willing member of the community to overcome the scourge of gangsterism in the Western Cape.