Western Cape's crime-fighting struggles: Police commissioner addresses officer shortages and semigration

Provincial Commissioner of the Western Cape, Lieutenant-General Thembisile Patekile, admitted that the poaching of police officers and detectives, and semigration, are putting a strain on police fighting efforts. 

He, alongside MEC for Police Oversight and Community Safety, Anroux Marais, unpacked the Crime Stats for the province at a media briefing on Wednesday, December 17.

In October, Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said that City policing resources were increasingly overtaking the South African Police Services (SAPS), with 560 more City's policing vehicles now on the roads compared to SAPS, based on 2025 fleet data.

“The City has further added 1,263 new officers to the streets since 2021 – a 48% growth in personnel - while SAPS dropped by an estimated 1,300 officers (15% decline) over the same period.

“At station level, SAPS vacancy rates across most Cape Town precincts range from 20 – 40% according to the same reply, which states that SAPS has 7,355 active duty officers in Cape Town in 2025. This is a 15% decline (1,313 officers) compared to the estimated 8,665 active officers in 2021 based on the police-to-population ratio at the time. There were also 200 vacant SAPS detective posts in Cape Town as of August 2025,” the mayor said.

“Cape Town’s population has expanded rapidly, yet our metro has lost more than 1,300 SAPS officers in just this term of office. This is unthinkable given the violent crime facing our communities, where not a week goes by without a terrible new example of innocent people, and often young children, killed by warring gang members.”

On Wednesday, Lieutenant-General Patekile said that since 2010, they have not been able to increase their staff establishment to respond to the rapid increase in population in the province.

“For example, semigration and immigration that affects us in the Western Cape, we have not been able to respond in terms of increasing the number of members to respond to the population growth. 

“Secondly, the attrition and people also going out of the service, looking at greener pastures, is also affecting us. You would realise the fact that we have other local governments, not only the City of Cape Town, poaching from us. Even the private companies are taking from us because we are not matching salaries.

“Hence, now, when we are looking at trying to retain the detectives, we have created an additional incentive for detectives. Besides all the other allowances we have now added, we want to increase them, as the finances allow.

“We started with R1 000 for the docket carrier a month - you get an additional R1 000, because what we have also found is that our members who are working on shifts, they get certain allowances, which the detectives were not getting. 

“Hence, we looked into that for staff retention, and we are hoping that if the budget is increased, which now is getting cut every year, we will be able to look after our detectives."

He said that they have 43 contract detectives, who used to be experienced detectives within SAPS, but then left. 

“We have taken them back for a minimum of two years to take on our cold cases. We are also busy with the re-enlistment of those who want to be permanently employed. 

“If the cases are not being investigated properly, then we are circulating the same suspects around.”

Lieutenant-General Patekile added that for the last year only they added more than 800 detectives from the police-training Constables, but that means in order “for a detective to be a detective, that requires training for a minimum of two years”. 

“You have the 800-something that must undergo training for the next two years.”

He said that if it were not for the help of the neighbourhood volunteers and the LEAP officers, then they would be feeling things “worse than this”.