Here’s why there’s doubt that deploying the army will be effective

SANDF members patrol near the Wonderboom Makro in Pretoria, 16 July 2021. Picture: Jacques Nelles When all else fails, send in the army. Sounds like something a struggling dictator might say.

And here we are, deploying our own army internally. There are two obvious assumptions one makes when deploying an army in any circumstance: that there is indeed an army to deploy and that it will be effective in whatever task it is deployed to engage. In South Africa, there’s a lot of doubt on both fronts.

Yes, sure, we have an army in name and entity but how much do you really trust their preparedness? That’s not a dig at the soldiers but rather a consideration of theSANDF’s budget issues. There was also that allegation of R50 million misappropriated from soldiers’ SA Army Foundation, and remember when we were told last year that only six of the Air Force’s 330 aircraft are operable?

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It wouldn’t fill anybody with confidence in defending an invasion from Lesotho, so how is it supposed to fill us with confidence that it will put a dent in the problems its sent in to resolve domestically? Again, not a dig at the soldiers but rather a comment on those who were tasked to keep the military well oiled, financed and ready for action. Even if I’m wrong in my interpretation of the military preparedness – and goodness do I hope that I am – this all seems rather catch and release in the bigger scheme of things.

That’s my question of how effective this will be. In isolation, whendeployed to fix crime, the only thing the army could really do to fix the problems is drop bombs into zama zama tunnels and get trigger happy around gangs. In the context of a criminal justice system though, they’re not in isolation and have to work with crime intelligence, prosecution authorities, police gang units and many other role players.

Gosh, probably social workers, negotiators and financial investigators too. With this in mind, what exactly is the army supposed to add that wasn’t already available to tackle illegal mining and gangsterism? Do we not have enough police officers?

Do we not have the capacity to fight these issues in the ordinary course? It would be easy to look at the situation and say clearly not but that’s just too basic a read of it. The system in all of its complexity just doesn’t seem to want to work.

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