Staff Reporter
The Democratic Alliance will lay a formal complaint against Western Cape police leaders after uncovering 164 criminal convictions linked to SAPS members in the province
In a statement released on Monday, DA NCOP member on security and justice Nicholas Gotsell said the party had uncovered “deeply troubling indications that SAPS Western Cape have allowed members convicted of criminal offences to remain in service for years without properly implementing Regulation 5(3)(dd) of the SAPS Discipline Regulations, 2016”.
“The DA will take immediate steps to investigate these failures that continue to hamper the credibility of the SAPS,” Gotsell said.
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According to the DA, internal SAPS correspondence and documentation point to “an urgent and highly confidential retrospective verification exercise” covering the period from 2016 to 2026. The party said the exercise was triggered only after it intensified parliamentary scrutiny over criminal elements in the police service.
“This raises serious questions about whether SAPS Western Cape ever had an effective system to centrally monitor, track and enforce disciplinary processes against criminally convicted members,” the statement said.
The DA said the 164 convictions involved “an alarming range of offences, including murder, culpable homicide, assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, pointing of firearms, driving under the influence, reckless driving, shoplifting, burglary, theft, drug-related offences, fraud committed by employees in positions of trust and contempt of court amongst other serious criminal conduct”.
It said some members on the list were linked to multiple convictions or offences committed over several years.
The party said the most serious concern was that, in certain cases, convictions remained unresolved for prolonged periods without the required disciplinary processes being finalised.
“This means convicted members have remained operational within SAPS structures for years despite the regulations requiring conviction-triggered disciplinary intervention to assess whether a convicted member should continue to serve as a SAPS member and officer of the law,” the DA said.
“The question now is whether this is yet another catastrophic failure of leadership under Western Cape Deputy Provincial Commissioner for Support Services, Maj. Genl. Preston Voskuil, whose name has already surfaced repeatedly in relation to the rape kit supply crisis and broader management failures within SAPS Western Cape, or whether it is part of the Provincial Commissioner, Lt. Genl. Thembisile Patekile’s condonation of criminals serving in the SAPS,” the statement said.
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The DA said SAPS Western Cape had already faced criticism from the acting minister of police, Firoz Cachalia, over “controversial interventions in disciplinary matters involving members found guilty of serious misconduct”.
The party cited cases involving W/O Sahabodien and constables Williams and Hendricks, saying members implicated in misconduct involving theft, fraud, drugs and misuse of SAPS resources were allowed to remain in SAPS structures after Patekile altered dismissal sanctions and replaced them with two-month suspensions.
The DA said it was after one of those cases that Cachalia conceded, in response to a parliamentary question from the party, that powers exercised by provincial commissioners under the 2016 SAPS Discipline Regulations had become problematic and needed review.
“That concession followed growing concern that disciplinary outcomes were being inconsistently overturned or diluted at provincial level,” the statement said.
Gotsell said the emerging picture was “deeply alarming”, describing “a SAPS leadership structure that appears unable and unwilling to consistently enforce integrity standards within its own ranks while frontline communities continue to suffer under violent crime, gangsterism and collapsing public confidence in policing”.
The DA said it would lay a formal complaint against Patekile and Voskuil and request an urgent investigation into an “egregious dereliction of duty”.
The party said it would also intensify parliamentary oversight into “the apparent systemic failures surrounding Regulation 5(3)(dd), including the possibility that convicted SAPS members were retained in operational, tactical and financially sensitive environments for years without proper disciplinary resolution”.
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