The DA’s Helen Zille says the military may need to support police against criminal syndicates behind building hijackings in Johannesburg.
She warns that parts of South Africa have become entrenched hubs for organised crime.
“I think a lot of the criminality actually is a result of unlawful insurgence by criminal networks internationally into South Africa,” Zille told Sunday Times deputy editor Mike Siluma on the publication’s podcast show.
Speaking on the Sunday Times Politics Weekly, she linked some of Johannesburg’s most serious problems, including illegal mining and drug networks, to organised criminal groups — some with international connections.
She said there could be extreme circumstances where police require military support when confronting heavily-armed criminal groups from outside.
“If you are dealing with an international criminal syndicate that stockpiles weapons and opens fire on the police when they are trying to execute a court order, then you’ve got to have back-up,” she said, adding that deployment of the army should be sanctioned by parliament.
Zille linked the problem of international criminal infiltration to the crisis of hijacked buildings in Johannesburg’s inner city where hundreds of properties have been illegally occupied.
“There’s hardly a building in central Joburg and Hillbrow that hasn’t been hijacked,” she said, adding that the problem was now spreading to suburban homes as criminal groups take over properties and rent out makeshift accommodation.
She criticised the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act, saying the legislation had made it extremely difficult for property owners and authorities to remove illegal occupants.
According to Zille, some hijacked buildings are linked to organised criminal syndicates and individuals who are in the country illegally.
The DA supports a “zero tolerance” approach to illegal immigration.
“There’s nothing populist about the rule of law,” Zille said.
“If people want to stay in South Africa, they have to be here lawfully.”
She added that illegal immigrants involved in criminal activity should be arrested, prosecuted and deported.
Zille vowed a tougher stance against lawlessness on Johannesburg’s roads too, describing parts of the taxi industry as operating outside the law.
“Have you ever been at an intersection in Joburg? Taxis are the biggest mafia in South Africa.”
Strengthening the city’s metro police would be central to restoring order, she said. Zille added that she would like to bring in JP Smith, the safety and security MMC in Cape Town, to help develop a metro police service in Johannesburg that is “as good as Cape Town’s”.
Zille is campaigning to become mayor of Johannesburg in the next local government elections.
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