LETTER FROM CITY OF CAPE TOWN, OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE MAYOR
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Geordin Hill-Lewis, to Firoz Cachalia, Acting Minister of Police
Date: 3 August 2026

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ADDRESSEE
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Honourable Firoz Cachalia
Acting Minister of Police
231 Pretorius Street
7th Floor, Wachthuis Building
Pretoria, 0002

CC LIST
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* Premier Alan Winde
* Honourable Anroux Marais, Minister of Police Oversight and
Community Safety, Western Cape Government, Cape Town, 8000
* Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane, Acting SAPS Commissioner
* Lieutenant General Sizakhele Dyantyi, Provincial Commissioner:
Western Cape
* Ald JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security

Dear Honourable Minister Cachalia,


NOTICE: DECLARATION OF DISPUTE IN TERMS OF CHAPTER 4 OF THE
INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS FRAMEWORK ACT 13 OF 2005
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I am writing to you regarding the ongoing and material failure by
you and your predecessors to give effect to the proper structuring
of the South African police service established under section 205
of the Constitution read with section 207 thereof, more
specifically the failure to ensure that the national legislation
establishing the police service in terms of section 205(2), being
the South African Police Service Act 68 of 2005 ("the SAPS Act"),
is a framework which gives full effect to the objects and
structuring the national police service, including the power to
investigate crime by police in the local government sphere, where
appropriate.

The City of Cape Town's police service is appropriate for this
purpose, both in terms of need and capacity, yet despite repeated
requests for attention to be given to providing criminal
investigative powers for the City's police service, either by way
of statutory amendment to section 64E or targeted regulations, this
has steadfastly been ignored. Your refusal and/or failure to give
any meaningful consideration to the City's concerns in this regard
is most visible in your complete failure to address same in the
SAPS Act amendment bill [B18-2026] introduced to Parliament on 10
June 2026.

In terms of sections 205(2) read with section 205(3) of the
Constitution, the City's metropolitan police service must be able
to achieve the objects set out in section 205(3), i.e. prevent,
combat and investigate crime. The SAPS Act (being the national
framework envisaged in section 206(7) to give effect to section
205(2) of the Constitution) must establish a framework whereby the
powers and functions of a police service can be discharged by a
police service in the local government sphere, and in so doing
achieve the objects of a police service, where this is appropriate.


WHY SECTION 64E FAILS
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Section 64E of Chapter 12 of the SAPS Act purports to give effect
to section 205 read with section 206(7), but it does not do so in
that:

1. It does not provide a framework for the powers and functions of
a municipal police service, as section 206(7) requires. It is
prescriptive and allows only the Minister to determine the
circumstances in which the power can be extended to municipal
police.
2. It is not rationally connected to section 205(2) or 205(3) of
the Constitution; and
3. In any event it is void for its vagueness.

The result is an Act that is currently being applied by you and
SAPS to effectively veto any consideration of crime investigation
by municipal police, no matter how appropriate. This also means
that all municipal police, once lawfully established, are
prevented from effectively achieving one of the objects of a
police service: the investigation of crime.

It is on this basis that we say that section 64E of the SAPS Act
must be amended in order to render it a constitutionally compliant
framework going forward, and in so doing permit the consideration
of investigative powers for municipal police where appropriate.

Our attempts to ensure a proper consideration of this request by
the various cabinet members responsible for policing, in terms of
section 206(1) of the Constitution, over the last four years have
fallen on deaf ears, as most manifestly evident by your recent
Parliamentary tabling of a bill with proposed amendments to the
SAPS Act giving no evidence of the necessary amendments. Attempts
by the City's administration to engage with the provincial and
national leadership of SAPS in this regard has proved equally
futile, with responses being given repeatedly that any
consideration of the required statutory reform can only be given
by the member of the executive responsible for policing, i.e. you.
The absence of any progress in this regard, as evident in your
amendment Bill now tabled, obligates the City to take this action.

You will be aware that the City has, over many years now, sought
your office's co-operation in rectifying this situation, and a
trail of correspondence over many years sets out the litany of
proposals and motivations made by the City in this regard. As an
example, I attach hereto my letter to your predecessor, Minister
Cele, of August 2022, comprehensively making the case of
appropriateness of such investigative powers by our metropolitan
police as well as providing options to consider in this regard. No
response was ever received by Minister Cele. Despite this the City
continued to try and engage SAPS and the Ministry on the methods by
which we can address this issue, firstly by way of proposing
necessary amendments to the Act itself (which proposals have been
met to date with silence or public scorn), or by proposing
regulatory reform as an alternative means to achieve the same
appropriateness, which has recently been rebuffed by you as ultra
vires based on legal advice you procured and which is premised on
an unreasonable interpretation of the SAPS Act.

The resultant continued application of Chapter 12 and narrow
interpretation of section 64E of the SAPS Act to prohibit even a
consideration of the City's metropolitan police exercising some
crime investigation powers, is not only irrational but also
unconstitutional.

Whilst I appreciate your personal engagement with this matter to
date and your stated preference for keeping the door open to
achieve practical, results-oriented solutions, we can see no
evidence of this commitment in practice, especially when one
considers the proposed Bill. We can hence see no way forward on
this issue other than the pursuit of more formal dispute-resolution
processes, which this notice commences.

We are hopeful that this notice will result in your agreement that
further amendments to the SAPS Act in your current Bill are
required to render that Act compliant with the Constitution.

The City recognises SAPS' resource constraints and the complexity
of ensuring successful crime investigations, and our request is
made in order to supplement and not supplant the efforts of our
national police in the investigation and combatting of crime. Our
intent is partnership in the strict spirit of cooperative
governance and a willing application of the word "appropriate" to
any investigative powers for the City, in terms of both ambit and
control. In so doing we seek measures that will measurably ease
SAPS' current crime investigation burden and improve outcomes.

Despite our repeated proposals, technical engagements, co-operation
agreements and formal correspondence, together with the City's
demonstrated operational readiness, our actions to date have not
translated into any practical mechanisms that enable the City's
police to meaningfully support SAPS in investigating the crimes
that have reached epidemic proportions in some of our Cape Town
communities or to secure better conviction rates in this regard.

The refusal to give any real or meaningful consideration to the
City's request in this regard is also reflected in SAPS's lack of
implementation of the Safety and Security Cooperation Agreement
("the Agreement") concluded between the City of Cape Town, SAPS,
the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service ("CSPS"), and the
Western Cape Department of Police Oversight and Community Safety
("POCS").

Legal advice the City has sought on this aspect confirms that the
now manifestly evident refusal by SAPS to consider amendments to
section 64E of the SAPS Act to provide for a framework for the
consideration of investigative policing powers for municipal
police, where appropriate, is unlawful. This attitude perpetuates
an unconstitutionality in the SAPS Act and blocks an effective
framework being established to enable the full objects of policing
to be achieved by the police in Cape Town.

In addition, the steadfast refusal to meaningfully engage with us
on this issue, or give any reasons why such legislative amendments
will not be considered by SAPS, undermines the constitutional
objectives of cooperative governance by frustrating the principles
of effective, efficient, transparent, accountable and coherent
governance, necessary to secure the well-being of people, and by
which we are both bound.

Given that the draft SAPS Bill makes it clear that no consideration
will be given to our requests, we have been forced to seek a
resolution to this matter via a necessary declaratory court order
pertaining to the unconstitutionality of the Act to the extent
described above.

We do still hope this can be avoided and formally hereby declare a
dispute for the purposes of engagement, whether facilitated or
otherwise, in one last effort to secure an agreed amendment of
section 64E in your Bill, and in so doing avoid costly and
time-consuming judicial proceedings being initiated by us on this
issue.

This notice is addressed to you in compliance with our obligations
under Chapter 4 of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act 13
of 2005 ("IGRFA").

In so doing I trust that our initiation of the dispute-mediation
process, mandated in Chapter 4 of the IGRFA Act, will also accord
with your recent comment that your "door is not closed" on this
matter and your stated preference for practical, results-oriented
solutions. We are of the view that the imminent public
participation that your amendment bill tabled at Parliament will
still have to undergo, gives us a unique opportunity to
meaningfully engage on the means to resolve this dispute and in so
doing hopefully agree on the necessary amendments to include in the
Bill so as to render the SAPS Act constitutionally compliant.

I do not wish to dwell on the national police service's current
capacity, being the subject matter of extensive attention currently
both in the media and beyond, other than to confirm that it is
patently severely constrained currently. There is a concomitant
surge in crime in Cape Town which has again necessitated the South
African National Defence Force's current deployment to many areas
of Cape Town. Previous deployments have not been an effective step
in combatting crime and there is no clear evidence of success in
this most recent deployment either, yet a City of Cape Town
metropolitan police service, which is well-resourced and trained,
has repeatedly had its offers of assistance to SAPS for the
bolstering of its own investigative powers rebuffed.


CONVENING THE FIRST IGFRA DISPUTE RESOLUTION MEETING
(SECTION 42)
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Given this notice declaring a dispute, and in compliance with our
further obligations in this regard under section 42(1) of the
IGRFA, I hereby convene a meeting between our respective offices,
and such officials as each party deems appropriate, as contemplated
in section 42(1), in order to now jointly:

1. Determine the exact nature of the dispute as contemplated in
section 42(1)(a)
2. Identify any mechanism or procedure, other than judicial
proceedings, that is available to settle the dispute as
contemplated in section 42(1)(b)
3. Agree on an appropriate mechanism or procedure to settle the
dispute as contemplated in section 42(1)(c); and
4. Designate a person to act as a facilitator as contemplated in
section 42(1)(d).


SUGGESTED CONDUCT FOR FIRST IGRFA MEETING
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It is my view that our first section 42 meeting that I am hereby
convening can be held online to better ensure it goes ahead
promptly and with minimal cost to either party. We propose the
meeting be held on any one of the following dates which best suits
your office and any SAPS officials you may wish to attend:

* 19 Aug 2026 ........ 3pm to 4pm
* 25 Aug 2026 ........ 2pm to 3pm
* 27 Aug 2026 ........ 4pm to 5pm

Should none of these dates agree with your calendar, you are of
course welcome to suggest alternative dates, and you have my
assurance that the City wishes to make every effort to resolve this
dispute amicably and undertakes to engage you in good faith in so
doing.

To this end I have also included herewith, as Annexure B hereto, a
draft agenda of items for discussion at our meeting (as guided by
section 42), and the City's prima facie views as pertain to those
various agenda items (given they are cited as essential in the
IGRFA Act). I am hopeful that by doing so this will better enable
SAPS to consider the City's views on each agenda item in
anticipation of the said meeting and result in outcomes thereof
that are more meaningful too. Should you wish to add items to the
agenda you are of course welcome to do so too. As a further aid in
preparing for this meeting, I am of the view that a brief context
and history of the material engagements on this issue to date on
this matter may also be useful and set out below.


MATERIAL ENGAGEMENTS / MILESTONES ON THIS ISSUE TO DATE
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My office has now sent at least nine letters to the successive
Ministers of Police pertaining to the request to give consideration
to how the City's request for investigative powers can be
accommodated within the current legislative framework in a
collaborative manner. These include:

* Correspondence from my office to Minister Cele on 18 August 2022,
1 December 2022, 8 February 2023 and 24 April 2024. I attach the
first of these hereto marked A.

* Correspondence from the Executive Mayor to the (new) Minister of
Police (Minister Mchunu) dated 22 July 2024, formally
congratulating the Minister on his appointment and requesting a
meeting to discuss the City's proposals to expand the
investigative powers of the Metro Police under the SAPS Act. This
request was met with an agreement to work together to combat
crime and the resultant Safety and Security Cooperation Agreement
(signed 2024), in which respect more is said below.

* Correspondence from my office to Minister Mchunu dated 23 April
2025, in which the City requested his intervention to ensure that
SAPS gives full and effective effect to the aforementioned
Cooperation Agreement, particularly in respect of
information-sharing, operational collaboration, and joint work.

* The record of the meeting held between me, the Premier of the
Western Cape, and you on 11 September 2025, following your
appointment to the role in an acting capacity. The meeting was
constructive, and you expressed support for advancing practical
solutions to address organised crime and improve intergovernmental
cooperation. However, despite these discussions, the underlying
operational barriers to the City's police exercising any
investigative powers persist.

* Correspondence from my office to you in September and October
2025, containing a draft set of proposed regulations prepared by
the City, at your invitation, in terms of section 64F(2) of the
SAPS Act setting out the City's alternative suggested solution as
a practical proposal for conferring limited, clearly defined
investigative powers upon the City's Municipal Police Service to
assist SAPS in addressing specified (firearm, drug, and
gang-related) crime via regulation; and requested a focus on
implementation rather than theory. This alternative option has
since been declined by you as unlawful, based on legal advice you
procured, and which confirmed that the SAPS Act does not
currently permit same.

It is important to note that throughout this period, the City's
officials have repeatedly engaged with counterparts in SAPS and the
CSPS at the technical level, but these engagements have not
resulted in the sharing of operational crime data or the
implementation of mechanisms for joint investigation as envisaged
by the Agreement.

We have achieved no success in this regard and whilst I had no
formal response to the multiple correspondences I sent to Minister
Beki Cele and Minister Senzo Mchunu in this regard, I do note that
when Minister Beki Cele was asked publicly why he was not prepared
to agree to the City's request to devolve investigative powers to
the City by way of an amendment to the SAPS Act, President
Ramaphosa responded in a public statement that in his view this was
"not viable." I am unsure what the basis was of that assertion,
which does not appear to be correct given that your own office has
now prepared a bill to amend the SAPS Act in various respects,
being the same method by which we proposed section 64E can and
must be amended.

To emphasise this aspect, over and above my formal correspondence
to successive Ministers, for several years the City's
administration has also sought enhanced cooperation with SAPS in
order to improve public safety outcomes, particularly in the
context of escalating violent crime, firearm-related offences, gang
activity, and organised crime. These efforts have included repeated
requests for:

* Access to real-time, case-level crime data (as distinct from
aggregated or historical crime statistics); and
* Operational cooperation and joint investigations in defined
categories of crime.

To ensure full disclosure in this regard I also confirm that after
correspondence sent by me to (then) Minister Mchunu after the
formation of the GNU in 2024, a meeting was arranged between
Minister Mchunu, his deputy ministers, my office, Ald Smith and
various senior officials in both organs of state, at which meeting
Minister Mchunu expressed a willingness to work together with the
City in order to better curb crime, and the establishment of a
working group to determine how to do this. He instructed his SAPS
officials to work with the City in this regard and as a result, in
2024, the City concluded a Safety and Security Cooperation
Agreement with SAPS, CSPS, and the Western Cape Department of
Police Oversight and Community Safety. The stated purpose of the
Agreement is to formalise cooperation, information-sharing, and
coordinated operational arrangements between the parties.

Notwithstanding the conclusion of the Agreement, and various
meetings between officials, minutes of which are available, SAPS
have failed to give practical effect to its key provisions. In
particular:

1. Real-time operational crime data has not been shared with the
City;
2. No effective mechanisms for joint investigations have been
implemented; and
3. No regulatory or administrative steps have been taken to enable
the City lawfully to assist SAPS with investigations, despite
repeated undertakings to engage on these issues.

The City, SAPS, and the Western Cape Government are also
participants in several joint policing and safety governance
structures and task teams, including those established in terms of
the Safety and Security Cooperation Agreement. These include the
Provincial Safety Council, the Executive Steering Committee, the
Technical Committee, and various workstreams established to address
legal, operational, technological, and communications aspects of
the cooperation framework. The minutes and records of these
meetings, including minutes of the Legal Workstream and Technical
Committee meetings, are available and demonstrate that the issue of
municipal police investigative powers, information-sharing, and
joint investigations has been repeatedly raised and discussed over
an extended period, with no progress. These records are relevant to
demonstrate the sustained engagement by the City, the knowledge of
SAPS and national government of the City's proposals, and the
absence of substantive progress or decisions on the matters raised
by the City.

The minutes of the various structures established under or
operating alongside the Agreement confirm that the question of
municipal police investigative powers has been repeatedly raised
and is recognised as a live issue requiring resolution. By way of
further example, the minutes of the Technical Reporting Committee
meeting of 20 October 2025 record, under the Legal and Compliance
Workstream, that there had been "progress on Metro Police Powers,"
but also note from SAPS that challenges relating to "investigative
powers and the sharing of crime intelligence" remain and "need to
be escalated to the political principals." The same minutes further
record broader concerns regarding lack of progress in certain areas
following correspondence from the City to SAPS.

The minutes of the Provincial Safety Council meeting of 3 December
2025 further confirm that the issue of investigative powers was
formally recognised at the highest provincial intergovernmental
level as a matter requiring escalation and resolution. In the
update on the Safer City Cooperation Agreement, the Provincial Head
of Department reported that the Technical Committee had identified
"investigative powers" and "intelligence sharing" as key issues
requiring escalation, while noting that progress on implementation
had been affected by "high-level matters under discussion between
SAPS and COCT." The same minutes record concern about escalating
gang violence, the pressure this places on existing systems, and
the need for improved data, technology, and coordinated
interventions to secure convictions.

These records are significant to this dispute resolution because
they demonstrate that the issue is not only known to SAPS officials
and the other affected parties but was expressly identified within
the formal cooperation structures as an unresolved obstacle to
effective implementation. The minutes are therefore significant in
demonstrating that the question of municipal police investigative
powers is not peripheral or speculative but recognised by all
relevant actors as a central and unresolved issue within the formal
cooperation framework. Despite this, no attention is given to this
in the bill you now propose to take forward.

All the above has taken place in the full glare of an obvious, well
documented and increasingly embarrassing decline of investigative
capacity in SAPS itself, evidenced by spiralling crime rates,
investigative journalism reports, and evidence provided in other
forums like Parliament and the Madlanga Commission.

Indeed, there have been recent candid acknowledgments by you and
others about the severe capacity constraints faced by SAPS,
particularly in relation to the investigation and suppression of
organised gang crime on the Cape Flats. This acknowledgement alone
underscores the practical reality confronting law enforcement in
the City: that the scale, complexity, and persistence of
gang-related violence in Cape Town exceed the current investigative
and operational capacity of SAPS acting alone. Despite this, SAPS
have not taken up the request for legislative reform to enable the
multiple offers from the City to support the investigative capacity
of SAPS, with both personnel, technology and other support that is
already available.


FACTUAL MATRIX ("APPROPRIATENESS")
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The City of Cape Town is a Category A metropolitan municipality
with a well-established institutional, financial, and operational
capacity in respect of public safety and law enforcement. The City
maintains a fully constituted Municipal Police Service, specialised
enforcement and investigative capacity, advanced technological
systems, and integrated safety governance structures.

The City's Metropolitan Police Department was established in 2006,
which complemented the City's Law Enforcement and Traffic Services
that then existed. In 2007 the name was changed to Cape Town Metro
Police, and in line with the SAPS Act, these Metro police officers
are also empowered to enforce the NRTA and NLTA as well as
Municipal Bylaws.

The City's budget allocation proposed for the Safety and Security
Directorate for the 2026/27 financial year, as approved by council
in July 2026, is provided herewith only for the purpose of
indicating the extent of capacity within the City currently to
assist and support SAPS in crime investigation if taken up, both in
terms of manpower, expertise and assets, and without any addition
of specialised investigators.

The City is proceeding to now implement a one-policing service
initiative, which is expected to commence later in 2026 and will
combine all three services (traffic, law enforcement and metro
police) under the metro police service. Metro police have the power
to undertake both traffic and law enforcement functions, so this
initiative will progressively increase the operational personnel of
the City to a maximum enforcement personnel of in excess of 5000
members, all with metro police functions.

The City submits that, where such limitations are openly recognised
at national government/ministerial level, there is both a rational
and constitutional compulsion to act. The continued refusal to do
so, despite available capacity and express offers of support, is
difficult to reconcile with section 205 or the constitutional
imperatives of effective governance, cooperative action,
subsidiarity and the duty to act in the public interest in the
prevention of crime and protection of life and public safety.


CONCLUSIONS
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The City hereby declares a formal intergovernmental dispute in
terms of section 41 of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework
Act 13 of 2005 pertaining to SAPS's refusal to engage or address
the unconstitutionality of section 64E of the SAPS Act, as amended,
which refusal or omission is now evident in the SAPS Act amendment
Bill as tabled by you on 10 June 2026.

Chapter 4 of IGFRA mandates that all reasonable efforts must be
made to resolve intergovernmental disputes before resorting to
litigation. The City's view is that the lawful manner in which the
dispute may be resolved outside of litigation is simple: The
Parliamentary approval of the Bill which SAPS has prepared must be
delayed until such time as we have concluded our engagement under
the IGRFA on the inclusion therein of a further amendment, so as to
render section 64E of the South African Police Service Act
constitutionally compliant, i.e.:

1. To include the words "and investigate" in section 64E(c); or
if preferred,
2. The inclusion of an entirely new section 64E(d) to read as
follows: "the investigation of crime, where appropriate."

In the case of either option, the determination of appropriateness
can of course also be engaged upon in this dispute-resolution
process, i.e. the ambit of any discretion or criteria to be applied
to give meaning to this word, as well as by whom.

The amendments we propose to your Bill will ensure the Act is
henceforth a lawful framework giving effect to the Constitution.

The City contends that section 64E of the SAPS Act is
unconstitutional in three respects:

1. First, it does not provide a framework for the powers and
functions of a municipal police service as section 206(7) of the
Constitution requires. It is prescriptive about the powers and
functions, and it allows the Minister, and only the Minister, to
determine the circumstances in which that power may be extended.

2. Second, sections 64E and F are not rationally connected to
section 205(2) and (3) of the Constitution.

3. Third, in any event, section 64E is void for its vagueness.

The City's position is that if SAPS agrees on the above, then
additional amendments to their current amendment Bill are urgently
required before same proceeds any further. Should SAPS retain its
steadfast refusal to even consider making the necessary amendments
to the SAPS Act via this Bill or otherwise, then at the end of this
dispute-resolution process the City will be obligated to consider
alternative forms of redress, including seeking a court order
declaring the said SAPS Act unconstitutional to the extent set out
herein.

As my final comment in this regard, I need to emphasise that the
City is only motivated by the urgent need to improve law
enforcement effectiveness in the face of escalating violent crime
in Cape Town coupled with an alarming decline in conviction rates.
Our request for certain investigative policing functions is not a
demand for duality or separation but an offer of partnership, an
opportunity to support SAPS through an empowered, capable, and
locally accountable municipal police service to achieve redress on
both these fronts.

I respectfully request that you consider the above and in written
reply let me know which of the proposed dates is suitable for our
meeting, alternatively what dates do suit you for this purpose, and
whether you agree to same being held online, and whether there are
any other agenda items you wish to add.

It is imperative for the City to promptly establish whether this is
a viable pathway to try and achieve resolution of this dispute, ie
via facilitation or engagement under the mechanisms provided under
the IGRFA. Given that almost five years of engagements on this
issue to date have not yielded this result, you will appreciate the
City's view is now to ensure that resolution of the dispute is
achieved promptly so that necessary amendments to the SAPS Bill can
be contemplated if agreement is reached. For this reason, I ask
that you let us have your response to the dates and agenda by close
of business on 13 August 2026.

Should we not hear from you, or you be in disagreement on the
validity of the dispute itself or the application of the IGRFA
process, the City will be compelled to assume that the matter has
reached the limits of co-operative resolution under the IGRFA too.

I really do hope this will not be the case and now look forward to
your response regarding the proposed dates to meet as well as the
content of the attached proposed agenda.

Yours faithfully,

GEORDIN HILL-LEWIS
EXECUTIVE MAYOR

Source: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news/policing-cape-towns-declaration-of-dispute-with-minister-of-police