Truth about arresting TikTok street racers in South Africa

While numerous videos have surfaced of supercar drivers disobeying the rules of the road in Cape Town, the city cannot do much to act and reprimand those identified on the Internet.

This is according to Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for safety and security, Alderman JP Smith, who told Cape Talk that court requirements have made using videos as evidence a complicated process.

“The criminal justice system is not on our side in this regard,” Smith said.

“The courts want these videos verified; in other words, the person who made the video must testify, which in this case is not going to happen.”

The video in question showed someone in a Ferrari supercar challenging another driver to a drag race at a traffic light in broad daylight on Beach Road in Sea Point.

Smith says that if someone records an incident like this using their dashcam or cellphone, they must submit it personally as evidence and then testify in court.

He argues that the National Prosecuting Authority does not deem the metro to have investigative power. Therefore, those submitting video footage as evidence must lay a charge with the South African Police Services.

He added that the City of Johannesburg ran a pilot project to try to invite people to submit video evidence, which Smith said Cape Town kept track of.

“It had very limited success precisely because very few people were willing to repeatedly go and sit in court because the cases are often postponed,” Smith said.

“This is because courts require the person who recorded the video to give evidence of how they recorded it and that it is the original, unaltered and untampered video.”

However, according to Smith, Cape Town is currently conducting its own set of tests involving arrests based on social media hearings, with the first hearing set for 18 May.

He added that these arrests involved videos taken in the offenders’ cars and posted to their social media accounts.

Smith said there is hope in the amendment of the Police Services Act, which would grant the City of Cape Town investigative powers, something he says both he and Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis have been petitioning for some time.

This follows numerous incidents of reckless driving involving flashy sports cars in 2025, with one instance leaving a bystander dead, bringing the issue to the metro’s attention.

Regarding using CCTV to prosecute offenders, Smith says that this is also difficult because the cameras only capture segments of the offence, making it difficult to prove “exactly what you’re looking at.”

Cape Town had roughly 2,000 security cameras scattered around the city as of September last year, which the municipality’s safety and security portfolio committee chairperson, Mzwakhe Nqavashe, said helped increase incident detections by 93%.

He said that the number of incidents detected by CCTV cameras almost doubled, increasing by 93% — from 22,498 to 43,457.

Cape Town residents with private CCTV cameras can also join the city’s greater CCTV network, which, according to Nqavashe, could yield multiple benefits.

He said residents with street-facing CCTV could add their cameras to the network, giving them access to the larger network when they need it.

This could be useful when private CCTV cameras do not catch enough footage of criminals.

Regarding privacy, Nqavashe said that the footage can’t be provided to just any member of the public, although there are ways to access this information.

However, he said there are two ways people can apply for access to footage under certain circumstances, such as proving to an insurer that a car crash wasn’t their fault.

The first is to apply using a case number, which can be retrieved from the case detective or the insurer.

If this option fails, the metro has an application that citizens can use to request access to the information under the Promotion of Access to Information Act by motivating their case.

The footage can then be released with conditions such as being unable to post it on social media.