Cape Town proposed a three-metre high, eight-kilometre security wall along the N2 highway.
Image: Ayanda Ndamane / Independent Newspapers
Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia has said that building an eight-kilometre security wall along the N2 in Cape Town, which will cost millions of rand, won't be enough to stop crime on its own.
Cachalia made these comments in a written reply to Build One SA (Bosa) leader Mmusi Maimane, who asked if the City of Cape Town's proposed N2 safety project would be more effective than just putting more police on the roads.
The N2 Edge Safety Project includes building a security barrier along parts of the N2 highway near Cape Town International Airport.
The project, allocated about R114m in the metro's adjustment budget, will cover 8km of the busy route used by thousands of commuters every day, travelling between the airport and the CBD.
The three-metre high wall is meant to reduce smash-and-grab attacks, stone-throwing incidents, and robberies that have long plagued the stretch of road, often referred to locally as the “N2 hell run”.
It was announced shortly after Karin van Aardt, 64, was fatally stabbed at a traffic light just off the highway after leaving the airport complex on December 5.
Three men have since been charged with murder.
Cachalia said: "The SA Police Service has not determined that the N2 safety project proposed by the City of Cape Town constitutes a substitute for sustained visible policing or enhanced investigative capacity.
"While the construction of a highway wall and/or barrier along the N2 may contribute to situational crime prevention by restricting pedestrian access to the roadway and potentially reducing certain opportunistic crimes directed at motorists, infrastructure interventions cannot replace core policing functions."
"To address safety concerns impacting nearby residents and road users, the police continue to implement sustained operational measures
"[The measures include] high-visibility patrols, intelligence-led operations, targeted deployments of specialised units where threat assessments require, collaboration with municipal law enforcement agencies, and focused investigative efforts aimed at securing arrests and successful prosecutions.
"Effective crime reduction requires an integrated approach combining environmental design interventions with sustained policing, intelligence, and prosecutorial action."
Asked when construction is scheduled to begin, the name of the appointed contractor and the current status of the project, the city's urban mobility political head, Rob Quintas, told IOL: "Stakeholder engagements are currently under way, and once formal agreements have been reached from all stakeholders, the city will communicate at the appropriate time."
“The N2 hell run” is the nickname given to the stretch of highway because of repeated attacks on motorists travelling along the route.
According to data from the Cape Town Metro Police, about 2,215 crime-related incidents were recorded along the N2 and nearby R300 corridor between November 2024 and November 2025.
These included robberies, shootings and attacks on vehicles.
Figures from the same data set show that 42 incidents of bricks being thrown at vehicles were recorded in the airport precinct between April 2024 and March 2025.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, during his State of the Nation Address in February, said the army had been deployed to parts of Cape Town to assist police in fighting violent crime and gangsterism on the Cape Flats.
The deployment, which will last until March 31, 2027.
A recent Western Cape Gang Monitor report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime report noted that gang-related murders in the first six months of 2025 were 58 higher than in the same period in 2024, after gang killings had already doubled between 2020 and 2024.