Western Cape Crime Stats: Provincial government safety plan is a tragic failure  

2 September 2024

The Western Cape Safety Plan has cost the Province about R2 billion since it was launched in 2019 but it has failed to show any signs of achieving its one key performance indicator: the reduction in the number of murders.

It is time for Premier Alan Winde to reallocate the funding to address the root causes of crime.

The latest crime statistics, released by the Minister of Police, indicate a shocking 27 203 cases of contact crimes; including murder, sexual offences and assault; were reported in the Western Cape during the first quarter of 2024 (April 2024 to June 2024).

This is almost 10 000 more contact crimes reported than in the first quarter of 2020 when 16 314 cases were reported over the same period.

Over the past 5 years, the rate of violent crime in the Western Cape has continued to spiral out of control despite the costly Safety Plan and the Provincial Government’s dabbling in a provincial policing project.

At the time Winde claimed that by throwing more policing resources into the ten police precincts with the highest murder rate, at a cost of R1.2 billion (for the first four years), he would halve the murder rate within ten years.

Winde did not disclose that the policing resources would be “Learner Law Enforcement Officers” with limited powers and very little training – now known as “LEAP Officers”.

Recently Winde revealed that he had taken the funding for the Western Cape Safety Plan from the provincial Health and Education budgets – and last week the Provincial Education department informed schools it would have to cut 2407 teacher posts from January 2025 due to budget constraints.

The full picture of ill-informed and populist political leadership is starting to emerge. 

The rights of Western Cape children to quality education are being sabotaged to fund a so-called Safety Plan that is failing.  

The number of murders, and the murder rate per population ratio, has increased since the launch of the Western Cape Safety Plan – despite the deployment of 1000’s of these Learner Law Enforcement Officers.

The total number of murders in the Province increased from 767 in the first quarter of 2020 to 1138 in the first quarter of 2024 and the murder rate ratio increased from 11 murders per 100 000 population to 15.3 murders to 100 000 population.

Tragically, and ironically, slashing budget allocations to core mandates, of education and health services, will have long-lasting impacts on children in the province and on the efforts to reduce crime.

Despite the plan being “data driven” and despite that data showing that extra boots on the ground is not reducing violent crime, the Premier and the DA government have persisted with this plan.

It is time for the Premier to concede what many of us warned him of 5 years ago. That the only way to meaningfully reduce crime is to invest in improved social services, better education outcomes, improving early childhood development, and fixing infrastructure and community amenity disparities.

We warned him that these LEAP officers could never reduce the murder rate and so far the data and statistics have substantiated that argument.

Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD: Secretary General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament, 30 August 2024