About 800 soldiers to arrive in gang-hit Cape Flats in April

The SANDF is preparing to deploy some 800 soldiers to gang-hit communities across the Cape Flats.

Troops are reported to be entering specific areas from 1 April, following the announcement by the President during his February SONA.

The deployment comes at a particularly bloody time. Across the Western Cape, there has been a spike in killings, with dozens murdered in just a few days.

Soldiers will support SAPS on the ground but won’t have the powers of arrest.

"What we do know from research is that the one thing the military can do is support, in the short term, a reduction in, particularly, gun violence, if they are coming in to support the police in removing firearms and kingpins," says Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Security Studies, Chandre Gould.

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She explains that the deployment could bring some immediate relief and create a sense of safety, however temporary, for communities caught in ongoing violence.

But she says that soldiers are not trained for policing and admits that their role is limited.

"By all accounts, certainly according to the president's statement, the anticipation is that the military will be deployed for a year. That is not going to help at all."

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So while the intervention may stabilise areas in the short term, many experts argue that it doesn’t address the deeper problems.

"A whole lot of other things need to happen. You need proper investigations, you need prosecutions, and a good intelligence drive. And, in the long term, we can't keep relying on these emergency responses to solve problems that are decades old."

Gould suggests that the real solution lies with the people who live in the affected communities, but she questions whether enough is being done to engage residents.

"The people living in the communities affected probably know what needs to be done and probably can come up with the kinds of solutions they would like to see in place. The question is, are we engaging those communities sufficiently?"

To listen to Gould in conversation with CapeTalk's John Maytham, use the audio player below: