ANC praises De Lille for pulling plug on Cape Town investigation unit

Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille has found an unlikely supporter for her decision to shut down the city council Special Investigation Unit: the ANC.

The party’s Western Cape secretary‚ Faiez Jacobs‚ applauded De Lille on Wednesday for “standing up to the right-wing” mayoral committee member for safety and security‚ JP Smith‚ in shutting down the unit‚ which was assisting the FBI and the Hawks with an investigation into city centre nightclub shootings.

Smith‚ however‚ said high levels of gang violence in Cape Town were “a stain on the ANC’s wholesale failure to run the national police service”‚ which had 22‚000 staff in the Western Cape compared with the city council’s 550 metro police officers.

“As a matter of principle‚ a good barometer of the right thing to do is to do the opposite of anything Faiez Jacobs argues for – it is likely to be wrong‚” he said.

“Sadly‚ [he] has the impossible job of defending the ANC national government’s failure to give effect to their constitutional responsibility of crime prevention.

“It is SAPS and the criminal justice system‚ under the exclusive control of the ANC‚ which produces a gang conviction rate of 2% or 3%. It is corrupt elements of SAPS who sold the gangs 2‚000 guns with which 1‚066 murders were committed and who had 78 weapons lost or stolen this year so far.”

Jacobs also called for the disbanding of the metro police intelligence unit. “The mandate to investigate crime is the exclusive preserve of the SAPS‚ not the metro police. We believe that is how abuse of policing occurs‚” he said.

Elsies River community policing forum chairman Imraahn Mukaddam said the state had failed to provide safety and security through the SAPS‚ which has been accused of arming gangsters in the Western Cape via corrupt officials.

He said the “trust relationship” between communities and police had broken down in the Western Cape.

Jacobs’ commendation for De Lille was the ANC’s second attempt in a week to woo the mayor. On Sunday‚ the ANC Youth League urged her to “step down from the DA” or risk being sidelined by “die-hard DA members”.

A statement by ANCYL provincial chairman Muhammad Khalid Sayed said: “We urge all members of the ID [Independent Democrats‚ De Lille’s former party]‚ especially youth activists‚ to leave the DA and join or work with formations that are more inclusive and respectful of black people.”