Military deployment raises questions over policing capacity

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JEREMY MAGGS: You would have heard President Ramaphosa has deployed over 3 400 SANDF (South African National Defence Force) soldiers nationwide on standby until the end of this month. Why? Well, to back up police at the anti-immigrant marches sweeping the country, protests that organisers have vowed to repeat every Thursday.

I think this raises a very pointed question: is this a necessary show of force, or a sign that the state is losing its grip on public order?

I want to discuss this with Dean Wingrin, he’s been with us on the programme before, he is a defence analyst. Dean, deploying something in the region of 3 500 soldiers, does it say South Africa has a policing capacity problem or a political panic problem?

DEAN WINGRIN: Hi Jeremy, and the listeners, and yes, it definitely does point to a policing capacity problem, in that despite the police budget being double that of the Defence Force, they still rely on the Defence Force to make up numbers and to put feet on the feet on the beat, as it were.

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I think it is quite prudent for them to use the Defence Force in this particular instance, in that we saw what happened in July 2021 and how the riots there just got completely out of hand.

So this is good that at least the police and the Presidency is taking the threat of violence seriously.

JEREMY MAGGS: Dean, a couple of worries, and let me indicate one that I’m concerned about. The letter from the president says troops are there for, and I quote, “any eventualities”. That seems to be a little bit vague. What does that phrasing actually authorise them to do on the ground?

DEAN WINGRIN: Well, I think we must differentiate this particular notice to the general Operation Prosper notice that came out in March this year where the Defence Force is also authorised to assist the police in illegal mining and gangsterism.

So in that particular scenario, which goes until March 2027, it’s the active involvement of the Defence Force assisting the police.

This particular operation against any potential, as you say, eventualities related to the immigration marches is very, very specific, it’s only for the month of July, and it appears that the Defence Force will only be used as a backup.

So the Presidency does use any eventualities as a catch-all phrase, but I think they’re not entirely sure themselves exactly if something will happen, and if it does happen, what?

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So they’re keeping it open that if you just need troops to protect government buildings, [they] can be used for [that], or if they need to call in the Air Force to provide mobility with the few helicopters it has to put troops around and put stopper blocks on various arterial routes, it can do that.

So they’re not [limiting] themselves, but I don’t think it’s as nefarious as what some people are making it out.

JEREMY MAGGS: But we’d be right, surely, to raise a question about that word backup. Let me tell you why it would concern me. Soldiers are trained for combat, not crowd control. What happens, Dean, when training or when that specific training meets a chaotic street protest, for instance? Is there not a disconnect in perhaps operational discipline?

DEAN WINGRIN: Yeah, well, that goes back to the original request for troops to go into townships for anti-gangsterism and so on, and also to use them against illegal miners, in that this is not what the Defence Force troops are used for and trained for.

It is part of the Constitution that they can be used internally to assist the police. But it certainly is a worry that they could be untrained and not suitable for that.

That is why I tried to draw a bit of a distinction between the normal Operation Prosper task, where they are actively involved, and in this particular instance, where they will just be used where there is a crisis getting out of hand.

But yes, you are right, it is a worry that the troops, I’m sure most of them will be Reserve Force as well, would not have been properly trained in a civilian way of dealing with threats.

JEREMY MAGGS: I guess there’s also the issue of optics, soldiers on the streets against a backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment. Surely it could risk being read as the state taking sides rather than just keeping order?

DEAN WINGRIN: Yes, there certainly is an amount of that and optics is very important. I think that is why the president said in his letter that they will be on standby, or certainly from my point of view, they shouldn’t be the primary force out there regulating and overseeing the marches.

They should very much be in the background, confined to barracks, and only when there’s a very real possibility of something happening that the police themselves cannot contain, should they then be relied upon.

But yes, it certainly would not look good for uniformed Defence Force members being the primary control of these marches.

JEREMY MAGGS: That’s critical because there’s a real risk here of scope creep, because a standby deployment surely could quietly become a default response to any protest that government might find inconvenient.

DEAN WINGRIN: Not only in this case. We’ve seen it from prior years as well, in that the Defence Force is now being heavily relied upon to assist the police.

Read: Army prepares for Cape Town deployment

After many years of trying to keep troops out of the townships purely because of the optics from the apartheid years of troops in townships, it just seems that the police capacity to put a finger on crime and so on has just fallen so far down the hole that actually it’s a last gasp now almost to use the Defence Force to assist them.

JEREMY MAGGS: And just finally, we’ve got to worry about money. As I understand it, the deployment costing over R50 million, runs until the end of the month. As I referenced, organisers say they will march every Thursday.

But what happens on 1 August if the protests haven’t stopped? The cash register keeps ringing, doesn’t it?

DEAN WINGRIN: Yes. Well, the president would have to reauthorise the deployment for that purpose, but the estimate of R54 million is just that, it’s an estimate, and it’s just what it says. If the troops are called upon, this is what the cost could be.

But from the defence viewpoint, this is certainly unfunded additional expenditure from a budget that is already underfunded.

The Defence Force itself can’t be too happy about being called upon once again to do things out of their own meagre budget and hope at some future stage that there would be a supplementary appropriation.

JEREMY MAGGS: Dean Wingrin is a defence analyst. Thank you very much.