Geordin Hill-Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town, has announced a proposal for a new detective unit for the city to perform specific investigative duties. It is a step towards greater policing autonomy for South Africa’s municipalities and is at first glance a sensible proposal that the public would welcome. Contrary to suggestions that this proposal faces significant legal barriers, the only substantial obstacle is political. 

According to the Constitution, the South African Police Service (SAPS) must prevent, combat, and investigate crime, alongside maintaining public order, and enforcing the law. The Constitution also says that South Africa has “a single police service ... established in terms of the Constitution".

At first glance, it seems pretty definitive, but it is, of course, contradicted by the fact that cities across the country have their own police forces and there are a number of provincial police forces too.

However the Constitution also prescribes that: “National legislation must provide a framework for the establishment, powers, functions and control of municipal police services.”

That in turn informs the section of the SAPS Act which holds that the functions of municipal policing are: traffic policing, the policing of municipal by-laws and regulations, which are the responsibility of the municipality in question, and the prevention of crime.

Whereas some analysts have interpreted this to mean that municipal police may not investigate, Martin van Staden, head of policy at the Free Market Foundation, demonstrates that such a conclusion is an absurdity given that the prevention of crime necessarily requires investigation.

Van Staden says: “The Constitution allows for municipal police services ... under section 206(7) which permits a municipality to establish a municipal police service subject to national legislation. This legislation, the SAPS Act, says municipalities may engage in traffic policing, by-law enforcement, and crime prevention. That third item is a general grant of power that should be interpreted broadly.

“Crime prevention necessarily implies investigation because you cannot prevent crime if you cannot investigate crime, and police cannot lawfully arrest people without a legitimate justification, which itself requires some form of investigation, or at least reasonable suspicion.

“On that basis, a municipality could either seek delegated authority from national government or, alternatively, interpret its existing mandate as allowing it to build investigative capacity as part of crime prevention, including a detective function. This could be done through formal delegation, legislative change, or unilateral action that practically tests the boundaries of South Africa’s federal constitution. When this comes before the courts, they will also consider the functional reality and effectiveness of such a system, as implemented, when assessing its constitutionality. As the saying goes, possession (that is, practical reality) is nine-tenths of the law.”

Cape Town sought to pursue the delegation route via an agreement between itself, the SAPS, and the Western Cape government. That agreement would have allowed investigative powers for the city police. However, a Cape Town official told The Common Sense that the national government revoked the agreement.

Consequently, the City declared a dispute in 2024 with the national government and requested that the police minister grant the municipal police investigative powers. That is where the process currently stands. If that is unsuccessful, the city told The Common Sense that it will approach the courts.

It would appear therefore that any legal obstacle to the establishment of a city detective unit, in as far as such an obstacle exists at all, can easily be overcome. What obstacles do exist are chiefly political, both in terms of the city’s willingness to press ahead and the national government’s unwillingness to devolve power. That latter unwillingness arises from the ANC’s ideological sense of concentrating power in the centre and its concern that the Cape Town detective unit would show up the corruption and ineptitude of the SAPS.

The importance of the establishment of the Cape Town unit is much greater than any discussion about crime. It is one of the many emerging frontiers of South Africa’s enclavisation trend where the failure of the central state to provide a service sees that service taken over by regional or private actors.

The question of crime is obviously also important. The Western Cape case provides particular justification for a local detective unit, as the chart below shows.

The province therefore has a violent crime problem. The chart below shows the provincial armed robbery rate as 280.9 per 100 000 in 2025, compared to the national rate of 234.8 in 2024.

By comparison, the global robbery rate, which includes non-violent street crime, is less than half the South African armed robbery rate.