Pass out parade for the second cohort of the Crime Prevention Wardens in Tsakane, City of Ekurhuleni.
Both have been launched without explicit parliamentary authorisation. Because they involve or are intended to involve, the deployment of armed personnel, they raise questions regarding Section 199 of the country’s constitution thatIn 2019, the City of Cape Town, with financial support from the Western Cape provincial government, initiated the Law Enforcement Advancement Plan . This enables it to supplement the South African Police Service’s capacity in areas with high murder rates in the metro.
Leap officers are not police but “peace officers”. These are law enforcement officials, referred to in South Africa’s Criminal Procedure Act, whose powers are more limited than those of the SAPS or metro police. Leap is in line with a 2018 Government Gazette that authorises municipalities to appoint peace officers.
But the CPWs establishment shows the risks of allowing components of government to establish armed law enforcement organisations. There is no evidence that Gauteng has given forethought to how it will develop and manage the CPWs, or whether it has the organisational capacity and infrastructure to run a policing agency of this size.by the South African National Defence Force — which lacks the expertise to train police.
The unregulated creation of armed law enforcement organisations in South Africa carries serious risks for national security, policing and crime. The justice minister’s response to the CPWs’ creation reflects an indifference to these risks, and is an about-face by the ruling African National Congress, which has vociferously defended centralised control over the police.because of weapons being lost by, or stolen from, their members.