South Africa: Children Dying As Police Units Collapse
The crisis in Nelson Mandela Bay’s crime-fighting units is far worse than anyone thought. A visit by the Democratic Alliance to the South African Police Service Flying Squad, Anti-Gang Unit and K9 Unit has revealed failures so serious that officers say they cannot protect the public.
Ian Cameron, who is the chairperson of the Police Portfolio Committee in Parliament, joined the visit with Yusuf Cassim, Retief Odendaal and Jason Grobbelaar. Cameron said what they found was “deeply alarming”.
The Flying Squad, once the fast-response backbone of the metro, now has only one working vehicle for a city of more than one million people. Officers without transport sit and wait because they cannot reach crime scenes.
The Anti-Gang Unit is also falling apart. It has close to one hundred members but fewer than five working vehicles. Officers work from unsafe offices, have no safe houses and none of them has completed security vetting. The unit’s yearly budget is only R6-million, even though they face deadly gangs every day.
The K9 Unit has twenty-two officers and thirteen dogs trained for drugs, explosives, patrol and rescue. But there are no high-performance vehicles, no proper dog transport and no groundsman. Officers must clean the kennels themselves even as the city battles a major drug problem.
Cameron said these failures break Parliament’s own order. In July 2025 the National Assembly adopted a report based on a petition from Cassim. It told the South African Police Service to rebuild the Anti-Gang Unit and to strengthen Crime Intelligence. No progress has been made.
Since 2019 more than one thousand gang murders have taken place in the metro. Thirty-nine children have been killed in the past two years alone. Parliament adopted clear steps to fix the crisis but the South African Police Service ignored them.
The Democratic Alliance says it will now take these findings straight back to Parliament. The party wants the South African Police Service to restore vehicle fleets for all three units, carry out Parliament’s 2025 plan, speed up vetting and provide proper support for all members. It also wants a ring-fenced budget and better intelligence work.
Cameron said the problems are too serious to ignore. He will follow up on Odendaal’s letter to the Acting Minister of Police, which calls for urgent national action to save policing in Nelson Mandela Bay.
By Scrolla.
