THE Cape Flats continue to bleed under the relentless onslaught of gangsters and extortionists.

According to Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police, gang and extortion related violence across the Cape Flats remained at crisis levels between 13 and 19 April 2026.

During this period there were 49 murders and 32 attempted murders. The previous week recorded 48 murders and 35 attempted murders.

“These lives were ended by intentional acts of violence. Families are shattered and communities forced to live through the same terror week after week,” said Cameron in a Facebook post this week.

“Forty-nine murders mean 49 homes where someone is not coming back. It means 49 families receiving that call, waiting at a hospital, a mortuary, or a police station. It means children staring at empty chairs, parents trying to answer impossible questions, and communities once again absorbing the human cost of a state response that still looks badly coordinated and painfully ineffective.

When I visited Ottery (on the Cape Flats) last week, the shooting was happening with warzone frequency. That is the reality for residents, the sound of gunfire becoming part of daily life in a community that has every right to expect safety,” said Cameron.

The Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament also criticized Operation Prosper (the deployment of the army to assist the police against gang violence on the Cape Flats).

“This is not criticism of soldiers on the ground. It is criticism of a haphazard intervention with too little measurable impact. SAPS intelligence remains a serious problem.

“We keep seeing operations that look reactive, scattered and shallow, instead of sustained, targeted action against the gang structures that move guns, organise killings, control territory and profit from extortion and narcotics.

“If this were truly intelligence driven and prosecution led, communities would be seeing stronger case building, better targeting, and meaningful disruption of gang and extortion networks. That is not what these numbers reflect.”

He said communities do not need more noise. They need illegal firearms removed, gang bosses targeted, extortion networks dismantled and solid cases prepared for court.

“Cape Town urgently needs expanded policing powers for gang related gun crime to competent local and provincial government, to act as a real force multiplier. A city facing this level of organised violence cannot remain trapped in a centralised policing model that keeps failing the same people.”