Theft from SAPS facility unacceptable

16 August 2024

The DA in the Western Cape is deeply troubled by reports of stolen ammunition and weaponry from the Faure Base in Eerste Rivier on Monday.

This theft, which saw items such as a gas launcher, multiple rounds of less-lethal ammunition and several stun grenades go missing, highlights a growing crisis of security within SAPS facilities and cannot simply be seen as an incident of theft.

Sadly, it represents a pattern of supposedly-securely stored weapons finding their way out of SAPS facilities and onto the street.

In January, 15 firearms were stolen from the SAP-13 evidence storage locker within Mitchells Plain SAPS.

That same month, DA parliamentary questions revealed that 1 725 officially-issued SAPS firearms have been stolen between April 2021 and July 2023 – an average of 61 every month.

What is simply unacceptable is the fact that one illegal firearm in the hands of a gang member may claim up to 12 lives on average - a scale of destruction of and within communities that can never ever be accepted as normal.

Incidents such as these demonstrate in clear terms the need to rethink policing in the Western Cape.

The Western Cape Government’s LEAP Officers, in collaboration with the SAPS, have confiscated hundreds of illegal firearms and made thousands of arrests in a landmark effort to reduce violence in some of the Western Cape’s most crime-afflicted communities.

But no amount of policing can be successful without a revamp of SAPS’s dangerously outmoded and overly-centralised approach to policing.

While the Western Cape Government remains committed to working with all partners, including SAPS, to make our communities safer, the DA maintains its firm belief that the devolution of policing to capable sub-national governments remains the single most-impactful measure to curb violence. In addition to allowing wider implementation of the Western Cape’s proven methods of tech-enabled and data-led policing, this step would allow the long-awaited implementation of a provincial site for the destruction of illegal firearms.

DA Western Cape spokesperson on Community Safety Thomas Walters says: “It is absolutely unthinkable that the very organisation charged with public safety has had a hand in directly arming violent criminals. This most-recent incident highlights the dangerous lack of security at many SAPS facilities, and must be taken as an urgent wake-up call. Efforts to curb violence within our communities can never be successful when our own national police service remains a prominent source of unlawful firearms. The DA calls for a full and urgent investigation into this week’s theft at the Faure Base, and will address parliamentary questions on the matter to the Western Cape management of the SAPS.”

Issued by Thomas Walters, DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Community Safety and Police Oversight, 16 August 2024