LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: Hill-Lewis links Ekurhuleni killings to DA’s campaign to empower ‘trustworthy’ metro cops

The DA has offered a R500,000 award for information on the women killed in Ekurhuleni, but in the lead-up to the local government elections, DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis has also used the killings to make a broader argument about policing powers and the state of the EMPD.

The Democratic Alliance has put crime and the collapse of policing at the centre of its campaign to take control of Ekurhuleni, promising to overhaul the metro police, increase visibility in crime hotspots and subject senior officers to lifestyle audits.

The party’s campaign comes as Ekurhuleni reels from the discovery of nine women’s bodies in less than two months, prompting an intensified police investigation and growing concern over the safety of women in the metro.

The ninth body, that of Jabulile Ntimba, was found in Dawn Park on 17 September, with police saying a multidisciplinary team had been assembled to investigate the cases, and two suspects appearing in court in connection with the case on Monday, 21 September.

Against that backdrop, the DA has offered a R500,000 reward for information leading to the successful prosecution of those responsible for the deaths, an intervention that came days after police announced their own R400,000 reward for information that could lead to arrests in the cases.

DA leader and Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis defended the party’s decision amid questions over whether a political party should be offering its own reward during an active police investigation and an election campaign, saying large rewards could help investigators obtain information from within criminal networks.

Hill-Lewis engaged with residents of Ekurhuleni in Tsakane on Friday, where he and the party’s Ekurhuleni mayoral candidate, Khathutshelo Rasilingwane, sought to position the DA as the alternative to what they described as a reactive and failing local government ahead of the 4 November local government elections.

The police have made it clear that the two rewards cannot simply be combined. Deputy national police commissioner Lieutenant-General Tebello Mosikili said the DA’s proposed reward could not be added to the official police reward, citing protocols governing contributions to the police and saying that the SAPS could not become involved in political matters.

Mosikili suggested the DA should have rather partnered with the police and collaborated to offer the increased reward.

Asked whether critics might view the DA’s R500,000 announcement as political grandstanding, Hill-Lewis rejected the suggestion.

“I honestly couldn’t care less what the critics say,” he told Daily Maverick.

“The point is that Khathu [Rasilingwane] is trying to help. She’s trying to show the kind of leadership she would show as mayor of Ekurhuleni,” he said.

“If other political parties, critics, opponents, whoever, don’t like that we are being proactive and are on the front foot on the issue of crime, that’s entirely their own concern.