SACP Western Cape condemns criminal syndicates and recent police killings in the Western Cape

21 September 2020

The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Western Cape Province is not surprised at the carnage that lit the blood-soaked streets of the Cape Flats ganglands. As the SACP in the province, we are on record stating consistently that policing and police management in the Western Cape must focus their attention on disrupting the architecture of the illicit economy underworld and stop what appears as palace politics within the police ranks. Thus, gang violence and assassinations are about territorial conflicts between rival gangs competing for the lucrative entrenched drug economy.

The criminal drug-lord network of foot soldiers operates with no regard for the law enforcement agencies, the law itself and human life. This is designed to intimidate and met out unspeakable horror in the working-class communities. The enforcers, the gang leaders, direct their attention on securing the unchallenged pipelines for their illicit products. Their tentacles extend into the so-called business and political elites, with links to the transnational drug smuggling industry.

The nexus between the criminal underworld, business and political elites

This criminal drug-lord network lives in the leafy suburbs of Cape Town, controlling the entertainment industry and of late extended their extortion activities to shopkeepers, vendors and township enterprises in general. Historically, criminal networks controlled drug territories and dominated nightclubs. However, a more recent manifestation of the pervasive stranglehold of criminal syndicates, in cahoots with local political elites, is the hijacking of developmental projects, in particular construction, and related services in exchange for so called “protection” outside the legal framework. This anarchy is pushing our country to the brink.

Basic principles articulated in the Freedom Charter and fundamental constitutional guarantees such as safety, security and comfort; freedom of trade; and freedom of movement have been severely curtailed. What further compounds the problem is that our public office, the South African Police Services and other related law enforcement agencies which should inspire virtue to be an instrument of service to the people, are instead confronting a crisis of declining public confidence. Thus, the SACP in the Western Cape believes that the tentacles of the drug-lord criminal network reach wider to a point of capturing certain elements from the law enforcement institutions.

Therefore, the crisis of social reproduction inherent in this phenomenon of crass accumulation is rooted in the corrupt capitalist system as competition for material gain is an embedded dog-eat-dog culture. Thus, on one hand, we have dogs in suits, on the other, dogs in gang tattoos. 

Assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear is a brazen act of bravado

The dastardly assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear on Friday 18 September 2020 outside his home in Bishop Lavis suggests a symbiosis between the criminal underworld and police top brass that is always preoccupied with palace politics. There is no credible explanation for withdrawing police protection for Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear. This assassination is a brazen act of bravado by the untouchables in the criminal underworld.

We wish to reiterate that the criminal networks must be dismantled including their rotten cops’ underlings, for there can never be peace and security as marauding gangs and rotten police roam free in our society. Until the policing and justice system strengthen the capabilities of crime intelligence and create an integrated detective system, dedicated detectives such as the fallen Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear will be sacrificed at the altar of organised criminal syndicates.   

Heartfelt condolences to the families of the fallen personnel in uniform

Lastly, SACP Western Cape sends a message of condolences to the family of Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear, and Sergeant Thabile Mapoma who was killed outside his home in Harare, Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The SACP deeps its red banner in memory of many innocent people who died as a result of crime in particular.

Issued by Benson Ngqentsu, SACP Western Cape Provincial Secretary, 21 September 2020