One of the primary questions any government must ask itself is: how do we keep our citizens safe? It is a difficult question, to be sure, for it cannot be asked in isolation. Instead, when it is posed, it is raised amidst competing concerns such as delivering services to all, providing opportunities for everyone, balancing the competing social and economic interests of society to create unity and creating the economic environment in which jobs can grow.

But there is an additional layer of complexity that is added for local governments that enters the equation: how can safety be managed whilst preserving the functions between different levels of government. Indeed, with reference to the Metro Police, how do we ensure that we have a safety service that is specifically tailored for the needs of a local population against the general safety policies of the national police service, the SAPS?

After democratic consolidation, there was a strong view that municipal police had little role to play in South Africa's future. And that view was understandable considering the local divestment of police functions during the darkest days of Apartheid in the 1980s. Back then, the Apartheid regime, desperate to maintain successive states of emergency, created ‘municipal' police services in townships, responsible for guarding government installations and the crudest forms of population control.

The final Constitution adopted in 1996 seemingly clearly stated that the country would need a single police service. Every effort went into transforming that service into one that worked for and with the people, not brutalised them. However, the Constitution also made provision for local police services. In our guiding charter, then, there is the recognised legitimacy for local communities to protect themselves.

Of course, during the 1990s, the project of transforming the police occupied those in power and the debate on local policing seemed to pass by on the wayside. However, the SAPS Amendment Act of 1998 created the conditions in which local police services could be established, to maintain consistency with the Constitution.

It was really only in the first Local Government Elections in 2000 that Metro Police services became a national issue again. Then, as now, crime was escalating in many of our metros and the issue of creating Metro Police departments was pledged by almost all parties.

Metro Police services were soon implemented by 2001 in different metros such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, eThekweni and Tshwane. Both were seized with the idea of providing local safety for their citizens.

Since then, momentum has been building in successive national governments to accrue control under a centralising impulse in a move justified as being consistent with the Constitution. But we also decided in our final Constitution that local police services could be formed. That vision was in line with the international trend towards devolved police powers for certain local problems. Local governments understand the needs of their populations better than a national bureaucracy.

This is the reason why Johannesburg established its Metro Police in consultation with the experience of foreign governments, such as Egypt and the United States.

The rationale of local understanding of local crime problems was not lost on eThekweni, either. Durban had long known the positive effect a local police service could have, with its experience of the Durban City Police, a constabulary service established in 1864. That service became a model of effective local crime-fighting which was used as a model by other metros. Ironically, it had resisted historical pressures from another centralising government in the 1930s to incorporate it into the then South African Police (SAP), without success.

The philosophy of a community-based approach to crime fighting was adopted by Cape Town in 2006 with the realisation that one of the key stakeholders in the community is the City government itself.

Since then, Cape Town has specialised its Metro Police service. The City of Cape Town has deployed several very successful intelligence-driven specialised units (Ghost Squad, Copperheads, Vice Squad, Drug Busters, etc.) who have had great success in combating crime due to good information, careful planning and excellent training. This innovation was only possible at local level while at the national level, the SAPS disbanded all their specialised units, which caused the loss of huge amounts of expertise and crime-fighting competency.

Given this fact, we must ask what the logic is behind the national government's centralising impulse, led in their battle-charge by Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa?

The integration of the Metro Police into the SAPS is a potential precursor of the disastrous concept of the single public service. Apart from the negative effect on local delivery as a whole, all international best practice points at decentralised policing, particularly in societies that place a high value on democratic processes, civil society oversight and public participation

This is really about control and the need to centralise. We should never let politics jeopardise the safety of our citizens.

This article first appeared in Cape Town This Week: A weekly newsletter by the Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Alderman Patricia de Lille, February 3 2012

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