JUSTICE MALALA | Bringing in troops likely to pour fuel on raging fire

Recent South African history has already proven that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to send the army into crime-infested communities will fail miserably. Deploying the army may gain Ramaphosa the applause of populist and performative politicians such as the EFF’s Julius Malema and others, but it will not improve the crime situation in those communities an iota. Instead, Ramaphosa’s decision is very likely to pour fuel on the raging fire that is crime in these townships.

Politically, it is also a risky move. Ramaphosa is sending an army whose chiefs have, over the past year, acted and spoken in defiance of his express orders. Why would you send an ill-disciplined, motor-mouthed, leadership cohort like this into communities and expect them to perform well at an endeavour in which they are not trained or prepared?

The first human being Ramaphosa should have considered before deploying the army was a man called Collins Khosa. On April 10 2020, during the first Covid-19 lockdown period in SA, soldiers patrolling in Alexandra township allegedly saw a cup with alcohol in it in Khosa’s yard. Alcohol sales and consumption in public were banned.

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Khosa was in his own yard. When they spotted the cup (how did they know there was alcohol in it?) they ordered Khosa out of his house, poured beer over him, choked him, slammed him against a cement wall and steel gate, and hit him with the butt of a machine gun. An internal SANDF board of inquiry initially cleared the soldiers of liability. Khosa’s case is just one example that illustrates that soldiers should not be deployed in communities without proper forethought.

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