Government

This is the physical test you need to pass to join Cape Town’s police force

Staff Writer

 ·2 Aug 2019

The City of Cape Town’s Safety and Security Directorate is taking more than 12,000 candidates through assessments for its latest metro police and traffic service intake.

The city said that the assessments started on Monday (29 July) and will see an average of 1,050 candidates being assessed each day, over a 12-day period.

While the assessments focus on a number of areas, one of the key focuses is a physical fitness test in a race against the clock.

The city said that the physical assessment requires male candidates to:

• Run 2.4 kilometres in 13 minutes;
• Do 30 push-ups in 60 seconds;
• Do 45 sit-ups in 60 seconds;
• 10 shuttle runs in 60 seconds.

The physical assessment requires female candidates to:

• Run 2.4 kilometres in 15 minutes and 30 seconds;
• Do 21 push-ups in 60 seconds;
• Do 31 sit-ups in 60 seconds;
• 10 shuttle runs in 70 seconds.

While the Western Cape has the lowest rate of unemployment in the country, the province has struggled with escalating crime.

Commenting on the recent violence, community safety MEC Albert Fritz said that the Western Cape is now a ‘war zone’.

“War is commonly defined by the UN and other such institutions as an act of conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives.

In the Western Cape, between November 2018 and May 2019, there were already more than 2,300 murders recorded in the province – 1,875 people were murdered in the past six months alone, Fritz said.

Read: South Africa is deploying the army to fight crime – here’s how the murder rate compares to an actual war zone