Defence minister says SANDF deployment not a permanent fix for gang violence

Defence Minister Angie Motshekga said that it’s not the job of the South African Defence Force (SANDF) to eradicate gang violence.

Rather, she believes that the urban deployment of some 2200 troops to assist with gangsterism and illegal mining is to neutralise the environment to allow police to do their job.

Appearing before a joint meeting of Parliament’s defence and police committees on Friday Motshekga said that the militarisation of society must be avoided at all costs.

She added that the continued impact of apartheid spatial planning in the Western Cape, in particular, can not be discounted in the ongoing spiral of gang violence.

But she said it’s not the intention for soldiers to indefinitely patrol the streets of crime hotspots to keep people safe.

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"What is our objective as defence? Ours is to neutralise, so that it’s not to say that in the Western Cape we are going to clear gang violence."

Motshekga said that the same applies to the use of the SANDF to root out illegal miners or Zama Zamas, who are known to move from one community to the next when there’s been a police crackdown.

"You also want to avoid the militarisation of society. And that’s why the time frames are quite important to say we are going in for a year to stabilise so that you don’t find yourself militarising the country and always dealing with hard power."

She added that while the defence force will involve themselves in breaking the chain of drug movements and affecting arrests, it will be up to the police to deal with the confiscations of the illicit goods, and pursuing cases against suspects.