First, let me welcome Sunday World back to the Western Cape and Cape Town.
There is little I can say here that has not already been said a thousand times about the devastation caused by the violent crimes of gangsters across the Cape Flats. Every day we read of the unimaginable terror and tragedy that thousands of families endure.
The one thing that links the murders, the turf wars, the extortion, the domestic violence and the children caught in the crossfire, is drugs. The fight for lucrative drug markets, and the sale of vast quantities of methamphetamines like Tik to increasingly younger children, is the single biggest force of destruction on the Cape Flats.
If we want to win the war on violent crime in these communities, we must focus our attention on the drug trade, and specifically on the dealers who target our children. We must treat the possession of drugs intended for sale as a serious crime with serious consequences, and we must use our lawful processes to keep these dealers off our streets.
But this is not happening. Very often, arrested drug dealers – often violent people with records of previous arrests for violence – are granted bail in a criminal justice system that is simply not equipped to deal with the scale of the problem.
There are delays of two to three years on laboratory testing of drugs, but there is also a protocol of only retaining drug cases on the court roll for six to seven months before dismissing them. It’s not hard to see the obvious problem there.
But more worryingly, prosecutors do not seem to consider the possession of drugs for the purpose of dealing as a high level and serious crime, especially when the person has a violent history. And these prosecutors have the discretion to decide on whether or not to oppose bail.
Bail decisions are a protection against arbitrary imprisonment, and this must be balanced against protecting the community. It is critical that community voices are heard in the process. The City has undertaken to support prosecutors to make better bail decisions by offering access to our wide range of resources, from school resource officers and ward councillors to our Metro Police and LEAP Officers. They can help prosecutors make a compelling case against bail for violent drug dealers, on behalf of affected communities. Because right now those communities are being let down by the bail system.
I saw this first-hand a few weeks ago. On 9 April, I joined our Metro Police officers for a ride-along in Mitchells Plain. This is something I do on a regular basis to better understand the crime and policing situation on the Cape Flats. That day I witnessed the arrest of a drug dealer in Woodlands who was carrying a bag with 30 packets of Tik. He was taken to the Lentegeur Police Station.
I suspected he would be let out in no time, so I made a point of going back to Woodlands three days later. As I suspected, I quickly found the same drug dealer back on the streets – he’d been released just two days after his arrest on bail of just R3 000. Not set by a magistrate – he never appeared before one – but as “night bail” by the standby prosecutor, the one person who could have (and should have) opposed his bail.
We were later told that the prosecutor’s decision to release the accused on bail was informed by a number of factors: he supposedly had no previous convictions, he had a fixed address, and the quantity of drugs in his possession – 30 packets of Tik – was considered “not that high”.
However, it took our City law enforcement officials less than a day to discover that the accused had a prior conviction for drug possession at the very same Lentegeur Police Station, and that he had also been previously charged with murder and, on three occasions, with assault – charges that were later withdrawn. Apparently none of this was known (or was it even checked?) to the prosecutor.
This complacency and indifference to drug dealing are the result of an NPA that considers and refers to drug cases as “lower-level crime”. In that environment, prosecutors are afforded great freedom of discretion in their decision on whether or not to oppose bail, and very often this results in drug dealers returning to the streets and selling Tik to children within days.
That cannot be the attitude to drugs on the Cape Flats. If the protocol is to consider 30 packets of Tik “not that high”, then the protocol is wrong and needs revising. And if a prosecutor doesn’t do the basics to establish the criminal track record of an accused prior to taking a decision on bail, the system is clearly broken. Drug possession with the clear intent to deal must carry enough weight as a criminal charge to warrant the opposition of bail as a default position.
Part of this conversation must also deal with the extension of investigative powers to City police. If our officers had such powers to help build winnable case dockets, we could get many more drug dealers off the streets.
Our officers participate in over 1 000 drug raids and routinely make over 2 000 drug arrests every year. But these large numbers mean little if those dealers are immediately granted bail and allowed to resume selling drugs to children.
This one example demonstrates how the broken criminal justice system is failing ordinary citizens, and protecting violent criminals. We’ve got it all the wrong way around.
- Hill-Lewis is Cape Town mayor
- First, let me welcome Sunday World back to the Western Cape and Cape Town.
- There is little I can say here that has not already been said a thousand times about the devastation caused by the violent crimes of gangsters across the Cape Flats.
- Every day we read of the unimaginable terror and tragedy that thousands of families endure.
- The one thing that links the murders, the turf wars, the extortion, the domestic violence and the children caught in the crossfire, is drugs.
- The fight for lucrative drug markets, and the sale of vast quantities of methamphetamines like Tik to increasingly younger children, is the single biggest force of destruction on the Cape Flats.
