Q&A with the Institute for Security Studies’ Chandre Gould on sending in soldiers

What are your concerns?

The military have been deployed to support the police a number of times, so this is not something new. But the scale being proposed now does seem new. I guess this is an expression of the extent to which communities are feeling desperate in the face of declining police services and a lack of trust in the police.

It’s an extraordinary vote of no confidence in his police by the president, isn’t it?

I think it’s an extraordinary expression of the extent of the challenges that we are facing in relation to organised crime. And I’m not surprised that neither citizens nor the president are feeling an enormous amount of confidence in the police right now, given what we are hearing both in the parliamentary inquiry into corruption as well as the Madlanga commission.

Does it inspire you with any confidence when the president says the army will be under the control of the same police?

They have to be. The army cannot be deployed inside the country unless they are under the command and control of the police.

The same police in which the president has signalled his complete lack of confidence?

The reality is that there are a number of concerns in relation to this. The first is whether the military actually has the capacity to do this.

Are they trained for anything like this at all?

No, they are not. What we’ve seen in the past — and what the research suggests — is that when you deploy the military alongside the police in discrete operations, in an emergency response to contain a particular problem in a particular area, it can have a short-term effect of stabilisation. But it’s very short term. You can’t deploy the military for months.

Hasn’t the president said they’re going to be deployed until March 2027?

That’s far too long. Apart from the cost, it raises a lot of concern about the militarisation of the state.

At what point does it become martial law?

I don’t know how to answer that. But if they’re under the command of the police, then I imagine it’s not the same as having martial law. [Acting police minister] Firoz Cachalia has been very clear about the deployment of the military from his perspective. What he’s been saying is that the military will be deployed as a short-term intervention, but it is no substitute for what needs to follow, which is a good, intelligence-led investigation that leads to prosecutions. So, certainly the acting police minister gets it.

Are you concerned that they differ on this?

I don’t think we know what the length of the deployment will be, and whether, perhaps, the president is trying to allay the concerns of communities facing high levels of violence and gang violence.

If the army is seen to be containing violent crime, won’t it be difficult for the president to pull them?

Research shows there is a short-term impact; there isn’t a sustained impact. You start running into all sorts of problems precisely because soldiers are soldiers; they’re not police officers, they’re not peace officers, they’re not investigators.