Only 5% of gun crimes lead to convictions in major South African city

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has said that only five per cent of gun-related cases in the city result in convictions.

This was revealed during a live stream hosted by Western Cape Premier Alan Winde with Hill-Lewis and the province’s Minister of Police Oversight and Community Safety, Anroux Marais.

The Mayor was busy discussing the success of the city’s Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) officers in confiscating illegal weapons, which currently averages just over one a day, totalling 450 a year.

However, he said that despite this success, the challenges faced by the criminal justice system mean that the overwhelming majority of criminals are allowed back onto the street.

“Only 5% of these cases result in convictions due to systemic and resource challenges in the justice system. This means that in 95% of cases, the person is released back onto the street,” the Mayor said.

“This is a tragedy and should be one of the numbers discussed daily in South Africa. We should be determined to improve this number.”

Police Minister Firoz Cachalia recently revealed that gang activity is the most significant contributor to contact crimes in the city when releasing the crime statistics for the second quarter of the 2025/26 financial year.

The statistics also revealed the top two police stations for serious crime reported in the country are situated in the City of Cape Town: Cape Town Central and Mfuleni Police Station.

As for the entire province, during the first quarter, the Western Cape saw 282 gang-related murders and 710 firearm-related murders. This increased to 293 murders and 700 firearm-related murders.

It was also revealed that the Western Cape had the highest murder rate in the country.

While Gauteng recorded the most murders in the country at 2,872, the Western Cape’s 2,308 incidents relative to its population of just over 7 million means the murder rate is 31.26.

Convictions a nationwide problem

Hill-Lewis argued that a lack of convictions is a challenge faced nationwide.

A recent report by the Institute for Security Studies revealed that only one in ten cases of alleged police corruption reported to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) have resulted in convictions.

More alarmingly, only 17% of these cases have resulted in prosecutions against the accused.

It was also recently revealed that the Western Cape’s conviction rate of people who have violated protection orders between 2020 and 2025 sits at a mere 13.6%.

SAPS Western Cape spokesperson Colonel Andre Traut told Newsday that of the 47,457 charges, 37,937 resulted in arrests and prosecutions.

Therefore, he argued that the poor performance of the conviction rate was outside the ambit of the police’s mandate.

Hill-Lewis also pointed to the recent grilling of tenderpreneur Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala by DA Member of Parliament Glynnis Breytenbach.

Breytenbach read a list of Matlala’s previous charges, including, but not limited to, multiple instances of theft from a motor vehicle, carjacking, house robbery, a cash-in-transit heist, and impersonating a police officer.

All of these charges were eventually withdrawn, apart from one conviction for stolen goods in 2001.