By Akani Nkuna
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan to deploy soldiers alongside police to tackle crime runs the risk of creating “moral hazards” and is unlikely to eliminate criminal networks, two defence and security experts told parliament on Friday.
Stellenbosch University sociology chair Professor Lindy Heinecken and SANDF Colonel (Dr) Laetitia Olivier were briefing the Joint Standing Committee on Defence, where they criticised proposals to send South African National Defence Force (SANDF) members into gang-affected areas, saying that a policing-led approach was better suited to domestic law-and-order operations.
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“The announcement by President Cyril Ramaphosa to deploy SANDF entails dealing with direct violence. We are seeing the violence, and we are matching the violence with direct threats of violence. However, that will never bring about positive peace because the structural violence and the cultural violence that result in this direct violence needs to be addressed first,” Heinecken told the committee.
Ramaphosa said in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday night that the military would bolster policing in the Western Cape’s Cape Flats and help combat illegal mining by so-called zama zamas in Gauteng, an intervention that many members of parliament welcomed as overdue.
Heinecken said the military’s training and institutional culture were not designed for sustained domestic deployments, where restraint and de-escalation are required.
Repeated internal use could erode the force’s deterrent effect and standing, she said.
“Utilising troops internally means they lose value, specifically if they are used consistently…. Military ethos and culture, which is based on lethal force and training to shoot to kill, is not conducive to internal roles, it requires policing staff, restraint, de-escalation, negotiation skills and non-lethal use of force,” she said.
Heinecken said her engagement and research with troops returning from overseas missions suggested concern about the legal framework governing internal deployments, including clarity on how much force can be used.
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She said soldiers had cautioned that internal deployments carry moral hazards and should be time-bound with clear rules to prevent escalation.
She said the soldiers told her: “If we are going to be deployed on this type of coercive role internally, there must be a clear mandate, clear rules of engagement and we must look at those with the legal provisions where applicable — and we must go in and out. It cannot sustain for a longer period of time because of the moral hazard this produces,” Heinecken said.
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