Arm police with funding, training

All the warning signs are there: a disturbing 440% increase in violent protests over the past decade and a growing vacuum of sufficient manpower in the ranks of public order police to stem the rising tide. Petrol bombs have replaced stones as a weapon of choice among protesters and torching buildings and vehicles seen as representing the target of these protests have become commonplace.

The immediate reaction to bolstering the sorely overstretched police is to call in the armed forces. But simple logic would point out that this is not an option this country can embrace.

Soldiers, by their training to use a weapon with maximum force rather than as a deterrent, preclude this. For while armed troops in a number of European countries patrol the streets, it must be taken into account that fighting a war on terror is one thing; turning guns on fellow citizens – regardless of the provocation posed by violent resistance to the snail’s pace of service delivery – is a different thing entirely. The very thought of TV footage showing a nation at war with itself, presented on the global stage, is potentially catastrophic.

The escalation of the intensity between protesters and police points directly at a lack of real leadership and the failure by our political leaders to acknowledge the anger of the unemployed and financially distressed in the shacks and shanty towns mushrooming across the nation.

The inhabitants might not be moneyed or schoolroom sophisticated, but they are hardly blind to the inequalities which still exist in this country.

And it is the police who have to face this seething anger and defuse the passions of the people left in the sump of society by a seemingly uncaring elite.

We need police with the protection of adequate funding, training and numbers.

We do not need another presidential jet.