While South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers march into fear-gripped neighbourhoods across the country, South Africans need to come together to find more permanent solutions to stop the constant bloodshed caused by violent crime.
As an analyst of South Africa’s public discourses, I seek ways to help us find collective solutions to our country’s problems, of which crime is one of the most glaring. I use a tool called constellation analysis to help people understand the reasoning of those who take various positions in crucial debates. In this article, I use it to unpack the government’s reasoning for the SANDF deployment and the alternative solutions suggested by its critics.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the SANDF deployment in his 12 February State of the Nation Address. On 19 March, the African National Congress’s Dakota Legoete, chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans, unpacked the reasons for the deployment in some detail in a Peace and Security Cluster media briefing. I will use his remarks as a sample of arguments in favour of the deployment.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has welcomed the SANDF deployment while insisting that the Department of Defence and Military Veterans be held tightly accountable for its management of it, especially considering that the department is at the centre of a range of corruption allegations.
In favour of the deployment
Constellations are groups of ideas that are linked together in some way, either through factual links or appeals to value systems. Frequently, we build constellations of ideas we value positively and other constellations we reject or deem negative.
Legoete built a negative constellation around the idea of crime as a security threat. He linked global instability with our need to address the internal threat of crime, saying, “As a nation, we are bound to prepare for any threat to our sovereignty or to our republic… The same case applies to the challenge we have of crime and the criminal element in our republic.” He argued that “when 26 000 people die [annually] at the hands of criminals, that is comparable to a war situation,” and said that “it is not something that the police alone can manage. The SANDF needs to come in, because some of these criminals use high-calibre weapons, automatic rifles and access to sophisticated arms”.
Lastly, Legoete mentioned the high cost of crime in his negative constellation, saying, “If one calculates even a conservative cost per incident, the financial burden on society runs into billions.”
Turning to solutions, Legoete built a positive constellation around the idea that a priority of the state is to defend its people, saying, “Defence and security are not optional. It is a core responsibility of the state.”
Another thing he spoke of positively is the constitutional and oversight framework governing the SANDF deployment. He spoke of how the constitution gives the president the power to deploy the SANDF and how his Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans is responsible for ensuring that “the deployment is accountable”.
Lastly, Legoete made clear that the SANDF deployment is not intended to be long-term. It is meant to last 13 months, ending on 31 March 2027. This means that he values “sustainable, long-term solutions” to our crime problem.
The solutions that Legoete outlines mostly hinge on cooperation between government agencies. He said: “We also need a multidisciplinary approach involving SAPS, SANDF, SARS, the Border Management Authority, the Department of Social Development, the Department of Home Affairs, and others.”
He briefly mentioned that part of the solution must be to divert people away from lives of crime, saying, “The Department of Labour must assist in providing skills to those who may otherwise be drawn into criminal networks.”
In short, then, Legoete’s arguments in favour of the deployment view crime as a threat to national security and cluster the SANDF together with the need to defend South Africans against this threat.
Against the deployment
Among political parties, the loudest voices of opposition to the SANDF deployment have come from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). They have voiced their disapproval in two media statements: one on the State of the Nation Address (SONA) and another, six days later, condemning a gang mass shooting in Athlone on the Cape Flats.
In both statements, the EFF developed elaborate negative constellations decrying the state of crime in the country and then turned its criticism on the Government of National Unity for failing to stem the tide of criminality.
In the statement on the Athlone mass shooting, the party describes at length the horrors of gang violence on the Cape Flats, mentioning the names of children who have been killed. It traces these to “a pattern of systemic failure”.
In the SONA statement, the EFF creates a pattern of repeating the president’s words and then using the word “however” to contrast them with our brutal realities as it observes them. It says, “inefficiency, political patronage and instability remain prevalent within the state in what we are currently experiencing in the Madlanga Commission and Ad Hoc Committee on infiltration of our policing and intelligence networks”. It also says, “a state that must deploy soldiers domestically to contain gang violence cannot claim institutional normalcy”.
The EFF’s main criticism of the SANDF deployment is that “the President is grandstanding with interventions such as the military, which are well known to be ineffective”. It also accuses Ramaphosa of “failing to directly address the root causes and specific devastation unfolding on the Cape Flats”.
The EFF does not give any reasoning for its claim that military deployments are ineffective in these statements. However, various reasons are given by academics and activists alike. The Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans heard from three academics that police are not adequately trained for law enforcement and are not well-versed in the use of deadly force in civilian environments. Defence analyst John Stupart points out that the SANDF itself is under-resourced and in no fit state to coordinate an anti-crime operation. Stellenbosch University criminologist Guy Lamb has shown that the positive effects of military deployments only last as long as the deployments themselves. ActionSA’s Dereleen James points out that previous military deployments have not succeeded in squashing gangsterism.
In its positively-charged constellation, the EFF shares its own plan to address the crime crisis. It says that it “repeatedly called for the establishment of an ad hoc parliamentary committee dedicated to the crisis in the Cape Flats”. Eventually, this was set up not as a committee, “but as a multiportfolio parliamentary inquiry” involving the portfolio committees on police, social development and others in the security cluster.
One of the main tasks of the committee, according to the EFF, must be “to follow up on investigations, arrests, prosecutions and convictions related specifically to the killing of children”.
As a long-term intervention, the EFF also emphasises the need for “a fully resourced, accountable and transparent national plan to dismantle gang networks, control illegal firearms, and restore safety to communities”. It also advocates that this go beyond law enforcement and improve social conditions, with “a real investment in social development, policing and economic interventions to protect innocent lives”.
Agreement on long-term solutions
This means that people on both sides of the debate about the SANDF deployment have a remarkable amount of common ground. Everyone can see that the deployment is not a long-term solution. Instead, there is agreement that a long-term solution needs to be “a whole-of-society response”, in Dereleen James’s words. It must involve many government agencies working hand in hand with local communities. It must extend beyond law enforcement and find ways to include people from crime-ridden communities in the economy through gainful employment.
It is also clear to many people, following revelations at the Madlanga Commission and corruption scandals in the Department of Defence and Military Veterans, that both the SAPS and SANDF are deeply compromised institutions in need of wholesale reform if South Africans’ trust in them is to be restored.
With so much common ground on long-term solutions, we, as South Africans, need to shift our attention to them and start the hard work of chipping away at the root causes of violent crime. Our future depends on it.
Ian Siebörger is a senior lecturer in the department of linguistics and applied language studies in the faculty of humanities at Rhodes University
It is also clear to many people, following revelations at the Madlanga Commission and corruption scandals in the Department of Defence and Military Veterans, that both the SAPS and SANDF are deeply compromised institutions in need of wholesale reform if South Africans’ trust in them is to be restored