GOOD Statement by Jonathan Cupido,
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor & Caucus Whip
30 May 2025
The City of Cape Town continues to equate equal distribution with equitable service delivery. Crime in Cape Town is not equally spread. The leafy suburbs, where crime levels are comparatively low, are not in urgent need of the same policing resources as communities grappling daily with murder, gangsterism, extortion, and drug-related violence.
On Wednesday, the City of Cape Town tabled amendments to its Draft Budget. While the introduction of a rates relief is welcome, it naturally results in reduced income for the City and with that, one would expect expenditure cuts to follow. However, what stands out is not a reduction, but an increase in the budget for Safety and Security – from R6.7 billion in Draft 1 to R7 billion in Draft 2.
Both versions of the budget promise the deployment of 500 new Metro Police officers. These officers are to be evenly spread across every ward in the city, an approach the Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, JP Smith, have praised as a breakthrough, citing the benefit of “dedicated officers in every ward.”
But while an equal spread of officers may sound fair on paper, it is in fact a deeply inequitable strategy. It ignores the urgent, uneven needs of high-crime communities, many of them on the Cape Flats and reflects a failure to respond to the lived realities of residents most at risk.
This continues the pattern we’ve seen with the City’s Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP), where billions have been spent and thousands of officers deployed, yet the top murder hotspots still include areas like Delft, Mfuleni, Nyanga, and Philippi East.
Crime in Cape Town is not being tackled with seriousness, strategy, or empathy. It is being managed for optics with political spin substituting real safety.
No Capetonian should live in daily fear of crime. But that won’t change until policing priorities are aligned with the actual needs of our communities not the PR needs of politicians.
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