Soldiers combating gangs? Law expert is sceptical

Constitutional law expert Professor Pierre de Vos is taking a wait-and-see approach to President Cyril Ramaphosa's SONA announcement that soldiers will be deployed to help police fight gang violence in the Western Cape and Gauteng.

Discussing his news24 article on the topic with CapeTalk and 702's Mandy Wiener, De Vos cited actions that've raised questions about the SANDF's credibility

"During the Covid lockdown when the SANDF was also deployed, of course we know about the horrendous abuse that happened. There's the one case with Collins Khosa where members of the defence force went into his house, accused him of breaking the lockdown regulations, assaulted him and he died.

"And the ministry refused to take any action... So this is a South African citizen sitting in his house. It's not even a situation that might occur here in the Cape Flats in a gang infested area where innocent people and gang members are going to be in the same group.

"So even if this was going to be helpful for the actual law enforcement aspect, which some of us have doubts about, I just think deploying the military which has shown in the past that they don't really have the discipline, they're not trained to act with minimum force, and also political accountability they seem to not be very keen on. All of that is worrying."

On Ramaphosa's related announcement that the State Security Agency will re-vet police management, De Vos is equally skeptical.

"So it's fantastic that people will be re-vetted but we're not going to know whether this is done properly, whether it's done with everyone, what the outcome is. All we would know is if there's an announcement of anything that happened there. Because what the security at the intelligence services does, it's by it's nature secretive.

"I worry about the combination of secrecy and the possibility that how the vetting is done might be factional or might be incomplete or might be corrupt or whatever. I'm not sure we will ever know..."

Could President Ramaphosa have looked at alternative solutions?

"There is a bigger problem with government and that is that the things that really in the long term make a difference are things that slowly but surely your have to change.

You have to capacitate the SANDF, you have to ensure that it is accountable to civilian authority, you have to train the soldiers properly. And the same with the intelligence service, you need to make sure it's not a political football. This takes years to do and it's not glamourous.

"So what politicians do, they're going to try and pass a law or they're going to try and do something that looks good on TV but the questions is then, will it actually change something? Hopefully in both cases I'm wrong and it really makes a dramatic change. But maybe I'm too cynical, I'm not sure that it will... We will have to wait and see."

To listen to De Vos's full discussion with CapeTalk and 702's Mandy Wiener, click the link below: