GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate
04 August 2026
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis’s announcement that the City of Cape Town has declared an intergovernmental dispute with the Acting Minister of Police Professor Firoz Cachalia over Metro Police investigative powers is pure electioneering hot air.
He knows very well that the dispute will go nowhere. It is a political mechanism to give the appearance that he’s actually doing something about a culture of gangsterism that claimed another 26 lives over the weekend.
There have been more than 170 murders in Cape Town over the past two weeks, and the Mayor is very keen to persuade people to disregard conditions on the Cape Flats as a factor and lay all the blame at the feet of the police.
By hard selling the idea that the culture of gangsterism exists due to poor policing, a function of national government, the Mayor seeks to absolve himself and his party of responsibility for the social transformation of a City that they claim to run exceptionally well.
It’s hard to keep count, but this is at least the eighth time in a decade that the DA-run Western Cape Government or City has declared an intergovernmental dispute with national government – on fishing harbours, policing resources (twice), rail devolution, provincial funding shortfalls, planning regulations, housing grants, and traffic-fine enforcement…
What they’ve all had in common is that none of them have resolved anything, or even been pursued through the process of formal mediation, let alone litigation, to conclusion.
The sole point of the disputes are the politics optics. It is governance by press release and pantomime, no different to the repeated announcements of breakthroughs to address the housing crisis while actually building fewer and fewer each passing year.
Transforming the City is a function of city government
Giving Metro Police the investigative powers Hill-Lewis wants won’t address the reasons why gangs recruit successfully in some communities but not others. Where violent crime is concentrated in the city is not coincidental. It mirrors past and present spatial inequities in Cape Town that were recently condemned by the Constitutional Court.
Violent crime is prevalent in spatially untransformed spaces that the DA-run City has failed to develop and integrate. This is not where the Mayor lives.
The City holds a constitutional mandate to address the root causes of violent crime: Well-maintained pitches, safe play parks and functioning community facilities give children in high-risk areas somewhere to be other than the street corner where a gang is recruiting, but the City largely outsources the maintenance of these facilities to under-resourced community structures.
Announcing a dispute with a national minister makes for a great headline for Hill-Lewis, but it’s another slap in the face for people tossed to the margins of the City by apartheid decree and still experiencing the dire consequences today.
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