MALAIKA WA AZANIA | Deploying soldiers to fight crime at best a temporary fix

In his recent state of the nation address, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to crime hotspots in Gauteng and the Western Cape. It was later announced that the deployment would include the Eastern Cape. The army is expected to aid the South African Police Service (SAPS) to deal with violent and gang-related crimes that are tearing some communities in these provinces asunder.

Over the years, the gang-violence in the Cape Flats has caused untold suffering, with thousands of lives lost. Many of those killed are children, who are often victims of stray bullets that fly at all hours of the day and night in the area. The violence is so extreme that parents are often forced to keep their children home because travel to school and even local spaza shops is too dangerous.

For this reason, it is understandable that residents in crime-plagued communities welcome the deployment of the army. They want, and deserve, to live in peace and to not have to bury their children every weekend. But the reality of the situation is that the deployment of the army to fight crime is a short-term solution to a systemic problem — one that requires far more sustainable solutions than the president has put on the table.

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Gang violence, a critical area that the army will be intervening in, is the byproduct of systemic neglect and challenges such as high levels of unemployment, a lack of public infrastructure, high levels of poverty and a poor quality of education. Numerous empirical and non-empirical studies have consistently demonstrated that crime is directly linked to socio-economic and political conditions in the country. This is true for SA and other countries across the world.

The evidence of this can be gleaned in Haiti, where violent gangs which now control the Caribbean nation were able to do so after a socio-economic catastrophe that contributed to the collapse of the government. In addition, and as argued by many scholars and activists, there is inherent and fundamental conflict between military training and policing roles.

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