GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
Unite for Change Leadership Council member and GOOD member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament
03 November 2025
Another eighteen people died in a reported 37 shooting incidents on the Cape Flats this past weekend. Twenty-two deaths were reported the previous weekend.
The police have recently been talking up their game, launching an alleged festive season safety programme and releasing statistics indicating they’ve made hundreds of arrests since April. The province has been on repeat, claiming it’s powerless to do anything without power over the police. And the City’s so-called LEAP officers continue to have little discernible impact. But the number of bodies waits for none of them.
The level of dysfunctionality in the State’s response is summed up in written replies from Western Cape MEC for Police Oversight and Community Safety, Ms AJD Marais, to questions I recently asked in the Western Cape Provincial Legislature.
Unequal distribution
To a question about unequal distribution of police resources, Ms Marais provided some detail on the findings by a commission and the Equality Court that the police were disproportionately under-resourced at police stations serving citizens of colour.
However, there was nothing the province could do about it, as it lacked the necessary authority. Despite its “repeated recommendations” to the police, and the police amending their system for resource allocation, “this has not made an impact”, she said.
Figures provided by the police “from 31 March 2024 indicate that the top 10 murder precincts for that period are still among those that have proportionately fewer police per population than many other areas,” she said.
The overall police to population ratio in the Western Cape is one police officer to every 435 people. In Rondebosch, it is 1:381, and Wynberg is 1:238. Delft rises to 1:808, and Gugulethu shoots the lights out at 1:962.
Western Cape Safety Plan Non-Review
To a question whether the Western Cape Safter Plan (2019-2024) had been subjected to independent review, Ms Marais responded that the plan has not been evaluated, and no research bodies had been consulted in this regard.
She did not say if the Western Cape was planning to review the Safety Plan or make any comment on its efficacy.
All of which begs the question whether there’s any purpose in the province employing an MEC for Police Oversight and Community Safety at all.
*The GOOD Party is a founding member of UNITE FOR CHANGE.
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