A man who allegedly shot a Cape Town policeman is expected to appear in the King William's Town Magistrate’s Court on Friday after he was arrested at a doctor's surgery while seeking treatment for a gunshot wound.

The arrest followed a tip-off to the police that the alleged gunman had fled the city to his Eastern Cape home of Tshatshu.

Western Cape police spokesperson Sergeant Noloyiso Rwexana confirmed that a constable had been shot and wounded in the leg in Samora Machel on Monday.

Eastern Cape police spokesperson Captain Siphokazi Mawisa said officers received a tip-off that the man, 30, had shot at their members in Cape Town.

"Police received information that he was going to visit a certain doctor in town for his treatment after he was shot during the shooting with police. [The] suspect was immediately arrested at the surgery and charged on the Cape Town case of attempted murder," Mawisa said.

The shooting came just days after six members of the Anti-Gang Unit came under attack during a tracing operation, after they apprehended a person they believed was linked to recent murders in Samora Machel.

Scathing letter

Officers had been searching for another suspect, also wanted for serious crimes, when shots were fired from one of the shacks. Six officers were wounded.

Unit head Major General Andre Lincoln, in a scathing letter to Western Cape police commissioner Lieutenant General Khombinkosi Jula, requested that three top-ranking members placed in his force by Jula himself be immediately removed.

He charged that one of the named colonels had planned and instructed the officers to take part in the operation, without an approved operation plan or specialised forces.

The second colonel, the unit's detective commander, had allowed the officers to be used on dockets not related to the Anti-Gang Unit and had allowed the sergeant to lead the operation, Lincoln wrote.

He, as the unit's commander, had not been part of the discussions surrounding the operation and requested the three officers' removal owing to a "break in the trust relationship".

An internal investigation into the incident is under way, police have confirmed.

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