Police urged to develop new strategy in tackling continued scourge of Cape Flats violence

Police are under pressure to develop a strategy to tackle the rising scourge of crime following a series of mass killings that shocked the Western Cape this week.

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu expressed outrage after seven men were gunned down at a home in the Kanana informal settlement in Gugulethu.

He was also alarmed by other incidents in the province, including the discovery of the bodies of three men in Samora Machel last Tuesday and a shooting in Nyanga that led to three suspected hijackers being killed on Thursday.

“There is no doubt that the Cape Flats in Cape Town have indeed become the killing fields of the Western Cape, with the latest shooting of 7 people in Gugulethu. What the Police Ministry and Police Top Management must refuse to do is to treat this as a normal trend and keep the normal methods of policing in place,” Mchunu said.

Cape Flats Safety Forum chairperson Abie Isaacs said residents are furious and want an urgent strategy to address the gun violence.

“We've consistently been calling for a special probe into gun violence, specifically that has been prevalent in and around the Cape Flats. We've also been consistent and will continue to lobby for the South African National Defence Force as a force multiplier to the police.

“Once the areas are stabilised and normalised, then it also gives time for the agencies to go back to the drawing board and not have conventional policing in an unconventional environment, because this is clearly what's happening."

Isaacs interpreted Mchunu’s comments as a recognition of the failure of conventional methods.

“And I think he further says that we need to develop a new strategy to deal with the continuous gun violence that's prevalent in and around the Cape Flats. That is my interpretation… We've been saying that you cannot have conventional policing in an unconventional environment.

“And again, gun violence is one of the common denominators. That's the main reason why we need this.”

He added there's a lack of both strategy and political will to address urban gang violence in the province.

“There's no political will in this province to deal with what we call urban terror gang violence in and around the Cape Flats.

“There are two schools of theory: either bringing the army, or not bringing the army.

“We hold the view that the army is the best people now to come in to stabilise, to assist the police, to stabilise those areas, while in the same vein allowing the police to develop a new strategy.”

Dr Guy Lamb, a crime and policing expert from Stellenbosch University, said many current strategies are outdated, with illegal firearms being a major driver of violence.

“The typical strategy is the day-to-day policing with policing patrols, and then when crime starts to escalate, they do these high-density operations, like Operation Shanela. But they've been doing this since the 80s.”

He said violent crime declined between the late 1990s and 2010 when more illegal firearms were being seized — but the momentum was lost.

“We saw it happening from the late 90s to about 2010, and then crime goes up again... a lot of the crime upswing we've seen since 2011 has been largely due to availability of firearms.”

Lamb warned that reactive policing fails to address the root causes of violence.

“The kind of approach that police have with crime combating, and declaring war on crime, can only take you so far, because you're really just dealing with the symptoms of it. You're not dealing with the causes.”

Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, JP Smith, said a loaded assault rifle was recovered in Gugulethu over the weekend, and the City has sent additional resources to support SAPS in known gang and extortion hotspots.

“The kind of firepower in the hands of criminals is of grave concern. The use of assault rifles is becoming far too commonplace, in Cape Town, but also elsewhere in the country. We simply need to stem the flow of guns onto our streets and into the wrong hands, and the City is ready to step up and play a bigger role if given more policing power," said Smith.