Pushback against big Cape Town traffic police transformation

The City of Cape Town’s (CoCT) plans to amalgamate its various traffic enforcement divisions – such as metro police, traffic services, and bylaw enforcement – into a singular entity have been met with backlash from its municipal workers.

Alderman JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, revealed to CapeTalk that the CoCT is currently in consultation with staff and unions surrounding the amalgamation of its separate arms of law and traffic enforcement under one umbrella.

Smith notes that the risks that previously justified keeping the entities separate have abated and that the benefits of the optimisation far outweigh the potential drawbacks.

For the officials, the reshuffling could lead to higher salaries as they will now be required to be more qualified to perform their jobs.

For the public, it will mean faster response times to emergency situations and fewer tax rands spent on governmental overheads.

The cost to implement these plans will be offset by savings in infrastructure and management requirements, “so the project doesn’t actually cost any significant money, and I think in the long run, will be a benefit for the public,” said Smith.

The CoCT has thus far seen a positive reception to these ideas by many of its staff.

“We have already seen from the staff quite a significant interest; over 1,000 staff have undertaken the RPL process through the college, to do recognition of prior learning and to do the break-in courses for the full metro police qualification,” said Smith.

Smith said the planned implementation date is October 2025 and that the project will take approximately four years to be fully realized.

The name of the newly formed policing unit will remain Cape Town Metro Police.

Internal pushback

Several members of the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) have voiced their dissatisfaction with the CoCT’s planned restructuring, stating that they entered the city’s employment under the pretense of fulfilling a specific role, but that this role will now be vastly different from what they signed up for.

“Indeed, there are traffic officers who are not happy because when they came into service, they came into service as traffic officers and that is their passion; they chose to be traffic officers,” said Hlalanathi Gagayi, SAMWU organizer, in a separate CapeTalk interview.

“When you amalgamate and put them under one roof… it’s going to take away the passion that they have because it means that now they are fitting into this bigger umbrella.”

The SAMWU members further claim that the higher-ups have not fully consulted with them to hear their concerns about the planned amalgamation, nor to explain the way forward.

In response to these comments, Alderman Smith said that these opinions are unlikely to be shared by the majority of CoCT staff.

“Firstly, I can tell you that will be the view of a very small group of [CoCT employees], because if you look at the stats of traffic police, they are constantly generating crime prevention actions, they are undertaking actions regularly that deal with crime prevention, because when crime presents itself you’re hardly going to stand back and allow the crime to be committed and say ‘I’m a traffic officer, I’m not dealing with it’, so that’s not the daily reality on the ground,” Smith said.

“Secondly, traffic officers have almost identical powers to metro police, so that then begets the question, how committed were those specific officers to only enforcing one piece of law, when in fact, as we reminded people thousands of times, you have the power to enforce all the laws and to be a general service to the public?”

Smith suggests that the cohort of officials is acting against the interests of the general public and is instead focused on remaining within a comfort zone.

Nevertheless, Smith said that no staff will be forced to make the switch and take on more responsibility if they don’t want to.

“Because of the phased nature of this [initiative] it is a voluntary transition, and for those who do not want to engage in further skills development, they will not be forced to move across, but they will forgo certain opportunities,” said Smith.

“When you have a complete metro police structure, you’re only going to be doing promotions for metro police posts, and those officers will then not have access to those promotional opportunities.”