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The South African Communist Party (SACP) is deeply concerned by the escalating levels of violent and organised crime in many parts of our country, South Africa. The repeated mass killings and violent attacks in the Western Cape, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, the Eastern Cape, Nelson Mandela Bay and Gauteng are a grave indication that the country is facing a growing organised-crime crisis that requires an urgent and decisive state response.

Today’s reports about violent crime in the Western Cape in particular reveal the alarming scale of this crisis in the province. Between Saturday and Sunday, approximately eleven people were killed in three separate shooting incidents in Langa, Gugulethu and Khayelitsha.

In one incident, three men, aged 25, 31 and 35, were shot and killed in the TR squatter camp in Khayelitsha. In another incident, four men and a woman were shot and killed in Langa on Saturday. In the early hours of Sunday, two men and a woman were reportedly shot and killed in another squatter camp in Gugulethu.

These horrific incidents occurred less than two weeks after another series of mass killings. On 27 July, four men and a woman, reportedly aged between 19 and 23, were brutally shot and killed. On the same day, another mass shooting occurred in Khayamandi, Stellenbosch, leaving four people dead and others wounded. It is evident that Khayamandi in Stellenbosch is emerging as yet another violent-crime hotspot, given the trends and patterns witnessed over the past few months.

In mid-June, approximately 12 people were killed in a mass shooting in a squatter camp in Johannesburg. Last week, a teacher from Michael Zulu Primary School in Tsakane, Gauteng, was brutally killed while walking with learners to school. In the Eastern Cape, a councillor was also killed in the Alfred Nzo region.

These killings cannot simply be treated as isolated incidents of criminality. The SACP believes that the patterns and nature of these incidents point increasingly towards organised criminal activity and expose a deeper crisis within the country’s security architecture, particularly the South African Police Service (SAPS).

The SACP is particularly concerned that these developments are taking place against the backdrop of close to two decades of the deliberate weakening of the SAPS, the destabilisation of police leadership, and the destruction of Police Crime Intelligence at national level and in provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, and the Western Cape. Both the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape currently remain without permanent Provincial Heads of Crime Intelligence.

Had South Africa maintained a functioning, vibrant, professional and stable police crime-intelligence capability, organised criminal networks involved in extortion and other criminal enterprises would not have been allowed to become so emboldened and brazen.

Objectively, organised crime cannot be defeated through reactive policing alone. The state must possess the intelligence capacity to identify criminal networks, understand their structures, anticipate their movements, disrupt their operations and dismantle the economic infrastructure that sustains their activities.

The SACP is also concerned by what appears to be an emerging trend in which women are increasingly present or involved in certain criminal networks and activities. This requires careful and professional intelligence analysis. A functioning crime-intelligence system must be capable of identifying the changing composition, roles and methods of criminal networks, including understanding the role and value that criminal organisations may attach to the involvement of women. Such intelligence is essential if the state is to effectively disrupt and dismantle these networks.

At the same time, the crisis of police capacity is being compounded by severe shortages of personnel, vehicles and other operational resources. Police stations in many communities are struggling to fulfil even basic crime-prevention, investigation and patrol responsibilities because they do not have sufficient personnel and vehicles. It is not an exaggeration when we argue that the Police Service in its current form operates at less than 45 per cent vehicle and personnel capacity, a crisis that the government must respond to. 

The SACP believes that this is not simply an operational failure but a consequence of political policy choices by the present government, including years of budget cuts and austerity measures that have progressively undermined the capacity of the state to protect communities.

The SACP rejects the notion that the police can be expected to confront increasingly sophisticated and organised criminal networks while operating without adequate personnel, vehicles, intelligence capabilities and other essential resources.

It is against this background that the SACP calls for the immediate stabilisation of police crime intelligence in the country and the immediate appointment of provincial heads of crime intelligence in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape. These two provinces are among the areas most severely affected by organised crime and extortion racketeering.

The SACP calls for:

The immediate stabilisation and strengthening of police crime intelligence at national level, including the restoration of its professional, operational and investigative capacity.

The urgent stabilisation of police crime intelligence in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, given the escalating levels of organised and violent crime in these provinces, by immediate appointment of provincial heads of crime intelligence in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. These positions cannot remain vacant or unstable while communities are experiencing escalating levels of organised violence and extortion.

The urgent restoration of adequate police personnel and vehicles, particularly at police stations and units operating in communities experiencing high levels of violent and organised crime.

An end to the continued erosion of police capacity through austerity-driven budget cuts. Public safety cannot be treated as a discretionary expenditure while organised criminal networks expand their operations.

A comprehensive intelligence-led strategy against organised crime and extortion, including the identification of criminal networks, their leadership structures, economic interests, sources of financing and links across provinces.

The SACP further calls on government to recognise that the fight against organised crime is not merely a policing matter. It is a question of the capacity of the democratic state to protect working-class communities from criminal networks that increasingly operate with impunity.

The continuing mass killings are a warning that the state cannot afford further delays. Criminal networks are becoming increasingly emboldened, while the institutions responsible for preventing and combating organised crime are being weakened and factionalised by political elements.

South Africa needs a decisive break with the policies such as neoliberal austerity that have hollowed out state capacity. We need a properly resourced police service, a stable and professional crime-intelligence capability, sufficient police personnel and vehicles, and an intelligence-led offensive against organised crime.

Finally, if the so-called Police Reset Agenda as launched by the Acting Minister of Police is to have any credibility and succeed, it must begin by rebuilding the foundations of policing. The Police Reset Agenda cannot be implemented on the foundation of a police service whose capacity has been hollowed out and whose intelligence capability has been systematically weakened and destabilised by the political elite in cahoots with the underworld criminal network.

Issued by the South African Communist Party