Reagen Allen grew up surrounded by crime and gangsterism in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town and joined hands with his neighbours to rid the community of the scourge. There, he was noticed by the likes of Helen Zille and recruited into the DA.
Fast-forward several years, Allen, 37, has the kind of opportunity he never dreamt of as the new Western Cape MEC for community safety and police oversight. But the problems he faces are huge and include police corruption.
He recently established that 680 cops in the province have been found guilty of corruption since 2009. Over the past five financial years, 71% of the province's 151 police stations have seen a decrease in the number of cops allocated to them.
Allen, who was the chair of the standing committee of community safety and cultural affairs and sport since June 2019, fills Albert Fritz’s shoes. Premier Alan Winde fired Fritz in March after a probe into allegations of sexual misconduct.
Winde tweaked the department’s name from community safety to community safety and police oversight when he appointed Allen. The premier said this was to ensure a “ramped up focus on constructive police oversight”. He said the province aims to halve the murder rate by 2029.
Allen told the Sunday Times he aims to restore the public's confidence in his department after the Fritz saga, a problematic relationship between him and police minister Bheki Cele, the province's safety plans, drug houses and his love for soccer.
It’s 8.30am and his aides are already adjusting his schedule the day after he was sworn in. He burst into his stately furnished fifth-floor corner office with sweeping views of Table Mountain and the peak of the Lion’s Head and quickly explained: “I am not used to being called 'minister'.” The Western Cape government calls its MECs ministers.
For a moment, the beauty of the city eclipses the challenges Allen has to tackle. He admitted that he has his job cut out for him.
He said crime has haunted him since childhood. He told of how he used to run to school and back as he dreaded falling victim to murderer Norman Afzal Simons, dubbed the Station Strangler, as a child. Simons terrorised Cape Flats communities between 1986 and 1994. Fear peaked when 22 boys were found buried in shallow sandy graves, face down with their hands tied behind their backs. There were signs that they had been sodomised.
Simons, a former teacher, was convicted and sentenced to 35 years for the murder and abduction of one of the boys. The Supreme Court of Appeal increased his sentence to life behind bars in 1998.
At the age of eight I saw a dead body lying in the field after a fight between rival gangs in Mitchells Plain
— Reagan Allen
“Our family home in Mitchells Plain is half a kilometre away from the primary school I attended, Caradale, and I vividly remember running non-stop to and from school (fearing) the Station Strangler. I also lost my brother due to drug abuse,” said Allen.
Allen listed the late Mitchells Plain crime-fighter Peter Roman, who died in 2019 having dedicated 40 years of his life to community service, among his role models.
“Peter Roman spearheaded neighbourhood watches in Mitchells Plain,” said Allen.
“He used his petrol and a Toyota Conquest to patrol the neighbourhood. He would tell 14-year-old boys on street corners to go home. Many people helped shape my life. I am talking about police officers, pastors and soccer coaches. I remember at 17 standing at a corner and a police officer told me to go home. A couple of hours later, one of my friends was stabbed on that corner.”
Allen says he wanted to be a professional soccer player and in pursuit of his dream he rubbed shoulders with former Bafana Bafana striker Thembinkosi “Terror” Fanteni.
“I attended Glendale High School mainly because I wanted to pursue a soccer career. An older boy in our road told me about Duncan Crowie, a teacher at the school,” he said. “It was with Crowie’s help that I was able to play for Mother City and eventually tour Sweden as an 18-year old. Terror Fanteni was in the same team. He went on to play in the champions league and for Bafana Bafana.”
The MEC said he is a trailblazer.
“I am humbled to be the first person from Mitchells Plain in the executive,” he said.
“I was the youngest person in SA to be registered as a debt counsellor in 2007. With the implementation of the National Credit Act, a new profession came about. But in 2011, I strongly sensed a desire to play a role in politics. At Caradale Primary School, I was the first person to serve as a student representative in the SGB (school governing body).”
He said the DA leadership noticed his potential when he raised service delivery issues on social media.
“I was vocal on Twitter as far back as 2009,” he said.
“And then the deputy speaker [of legislature Beverley Schafercorr] engaged me. She was a member of staff then. I engaged her and Helen [Zille] during the fresh days of Twitter. I raised service delivery issues whenever someone’s electricity or water was cut or reduced.”
He said he was placed on the party’s young leaders’ programme in 2012.
• 680: The number of Western Cape cops who have been found guilty of corruption since 2009
• 1 557: The number of drug houses in the province
— In Numbers
“We received not only leadership training but it prepared us to grow our timber. Whether it is in academia and wherever we find ourselves eventually, we will be able to make a difference,” he said.
“I served as the national media and publicity chairperson for the DA youth. I also worked in various roles in the DA leader's office, including for Zille and Mmusi Maimane. I became a member of the provincial legislature in 2018. It’s a period of my life where I realised that it is difficult to survive in a political environment.”
He said policing and crime challenges facing the province, including drugs, mass shootings, copper theft and extortion, gave him sleepless nights. Allen said detectives are drowning in dockets.
“For example, in Philippi, one detective is sitting with over 600 dockets. But the average is 250 dockets. It is humanly impossible. We have a 10% vacancy rate in SAPS in an already under-resourced environment. That is part of my engagements to see how we can strengthen the hand of SAPS in the province so that national [government] can ensure that SAPS is properly funded and that we fill all the critical posts.”
Allen said there had not been any convictions for gang-related crimes in the province’s “top murder police stations”, Gugulethu, Harare, Kraaifontein, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Manenberg, Bishop Lavis and Philippi, between March 2020 and May 2021. He said there were 1,557 drug houses in the province, 47% of which are in Cape Town.
Allen said he has since asked the office of the provincial police ombudsman to probe police inefficiency in shutting down drug houses and failure to stop the manufacture and transportation of drugs.
“We have a solid relationship with SAPS in the Western Cape and I am looking forward to seeing how I will work with the minister of police,” he said.
Allen said Cele’s stance that the city of Cape Town’s law enforcement unit is unconstitutional bothered him. He said the unit, which is part of the province’s Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (Leap), had helped reduce crime in areas such as Nyanga.
“We have sent a legal opinion to the minister. He is making public comments instead of coming to the table. He will say in public, to win votes, that it is an unconstitutional body. It is not. We are prepared to go all the way and if need be take it to court. But we firmly believe that we are doing it in the interest of safety,” he said.
Allen said Cele had invited him to an oversight visit to Mitchells Plain last October but did not avail himself.
“He said to everyone he is going to invite me to an oversight visit, I am going to walk with him, and we are going to leave bodyguards at home. I didn’t even have bodyguards at the time. I was a mere chairperson. I followed up with him. He hasn’t invited me yet. Maybe he is going to invite me now because I am so ready to be at the table.” He dismissed Cele’s overtures as “a political gimmick”.
He said 1,000 Leap officers had already been enlisted to crime hotspots.
“It is a bold programme whereby we provide extra enforcement officers in our less safe areas. We have established area-based teams that work in the hotspots and provide extra boots on the ground. They work alongside SAPS, and we have received amazing feedback from station commanders,” he said.
This week, Cele had not responded directly to Allen’s claims.
“This government has put a sharp eye on political killings that have taken place not only in KwaZulu-Natal but also in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga,” said Cele.
“And there are talks to take the political task team to these provinces but this must be done keeping in mind that all provinces have different political dynamics that must be considered.”
Mesuli Kama, ANC spokesperson on community safety and police oversight in the legislature, welcomed Allen’s appointment as an opportunity to break with the past and chart a new path for community safety in the Western Cape.
“As the former chairperson of the standing committee on community safety he knows exactly what the challenges on the ground are and the issues that need to be addressed urgently,” said Kama.
“He needs to urgently address the under-resourcing and the undermining of the CPFs (community policing forums), he must also address the divisions between crime-fighting community structures. This will help improve relations between communities and policing structures in the province.
“The litmus test for him is whether he can convince his premier and government to (provide) resources towards addressing the causative factors of violent crimes, including addressing spatial and environmental design and lack of CCTVs, which create a conducive environment for violent crimes in working-class communities and informal settlements.”
He said staff in Allen’s department will not “recover from the Fritz saga anytime soon, more so when his department has not even finalised investigation and disciplinary measures against some members who were involved”.
Kama urged Allen to expedite investigations.
“The change of the department's name is an acknowledgment on the part of the premier and his cabinet that they failed to conduct proper police oversight in the province. They have disclosed to us that they cannot conduct visits to all police stations in the province in a year. Instead of wasting resources on duplicate functions like the police ombud, these scarce resources were needed to recruit more staff to conduct oversight. So the name change is meaningless, unless there will be additional resources to recruit more staff for this purpose,” he said.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.