Numerous videos have been making the rounds on social media depicting supercar drivers flaunting the rules of the road in Cape Town, but the city can’t do much to stop this behaviour.
This is according to Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for safety and security, Alderman JP Smith, who recently appeared on Cape Talk to discuss the difficulties the authorities face when taking legal action against these perpetrators.
A cumbersome process
Smith explained that South Africa’s court requirements have made using videos as evidence a complicated process.
“The criminal justice system is not on our side in this regard,” Smith said.
“The courts want these videos verified; in other words, the person who made the video must testify, which in this case is not going to happen.”
One such video showed a person in a Ferrari challenging another driver to a drag race at a traffic light in broad daylight on Beach Road in Sea Point.
Smith says that if someone records an incident like this using their dashcam or cellphone, they must submit it personally as evidence and then testify in court.
He explained that the National Prosecuting Authority does not deem the metro to have investigative power, which means those submitting video footage as evidence must submit a charge to the South African Police Services.
It was also pointed out that the City of Johannesburg ran a pilot project inviting citizens to submit video evidence, with disappointing results.
“It had very limited success precisely because very few people were willing to repeatedly go and sit in court because the cases are often postponed,” Smith said.
“This is because courts require the person who recorded the video to give evidence of how they recorded it and that it is the original, unaltered, and untampered video.”
He went on to say that Cape Town is currently engaged with its own research involving arrests based on social media hearings – the first of which is scheduled for 18 May.
In these cases, the arrests involved videos taken in the offenders’ cars that were posted to their social media accounts.
Smith said that Cape Town has its hopes pinned on the amendment to the Police Services Act, which would grant the city investigative powers, something that he and Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis have been petitioning for some time.
CCTV cameras have problems as well, as they only capture segments of an offence like a speeding supercar, making it difficult to use as proof in litigation.
Cape Town has roughly 2,000 CCTV cameras monitoring its streets, which the municipality’s safety and security portfolio committee chairperson, Mzwakhe Nqavashe, claims has helped increase crime detection by 93%.
Private residents with CCTV cameras can also join the city’s wider surveillance network which, according to Nqavashe, would allow the authorities to fill in gaps in their own footage when prosecuting criminals.
However, there are concerns about how this footage can be used and that it may conflict with South Africa’s privacy laws, which forbid citizens from sharing this data with random members of the public.
Citizens do have options to request this footage though, such as when attempting to prove to an insurer that a problem wasn’t their fault.
This typically requires a case number, which can be obtained from a case detective or an insurer.
Alternatively, the metro has an application process that residents can use to request data under the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
This will allow the footage to be released under certain restrictions, such as not being able to share it on social media.
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