Yes, send in the army when cops can’t cope
Deployment’s main aim is to allow overburdened police to fight crime
WHEN all the politicians have finished with their grandstanding and mudslinging, it might be worthwhile to address the subject of military deployment in a more objective fashion. As a former soldier and 1994 election security adviser, I think one should ask and answer a few pointed questions:
Can the military be legitimately so deployed? The answer is “yes”. Deploying the military “in support of the civil power” is legitimately resorted to in various democracies in time of emergency when the police are unable to cope.
Is the SANDF wrongly equipped for such a task? In principle, yes. But we now have a situation where it seems as if criminals often pack more firepower than the police, which is totally unacceptable and also totally unfair to the police. As Al Capone reportedly once remarked, you don’t take a knife to a gunfight.
Is the SANDF wrongly trained for such a task? The answer is “yes and no”. The solution is first to train the soldiers to handle civil unrest/ crime situations (it’s all in the handbooks) and second, to ensure that they are very strictly disciplined.
Who would be in charge? The answer is “the police, representing the civil power”. That means each patrol – and in many cases foot patrols, not scooting around in a van from time to time – must have at least one police member with it to make sure the soldiers stay on the straight and narrow, while overall command should reside with the most senior police officer, with the close co-operation of a senior local military officer.
Does this approach work? The answer is “yes, if properly conducted”. The government and its predecessor have made frequent use of such deployments. Almost invariably, the first effect of such a deployment has been a sudden drop in street crime. But there is a caveat to all this:
It serves no purpose if the deployment is of the “fire brigade” type, ie the army sends in a couple of platoons to some area for a week or two and the crime dies down, often because the criminals relocate for the time being. Then the soldiers are withdrawn and crime goes right up again, with anybody who assisted them suffering the consequence.
If you are going to use the army the right way, you must be willing to deploy enough soldiers in enough areas for as long as it takes – many months, perhaps – so that normality can return and normal social structures can recover. And bear in mind that this is round-the-clock shift duty, so for every soldier deployed on the ground you need two others standing by. So if you try the “fire brigade” tactic you might as well forget it.
The aim of a deployment is not primarily to “fight crime.” It is to suppress unlawful activity so that the police can concentrate on fighting crime. One could call it “visible policing”, in other words, fielding a real deterrent. Or, perhaps, the soldiers could be used for throwing up a cordon around a building during a raid so that the police can actually carry out the raid in the sure knowledge that the miscreants are not dodging out through the back door; or perhaps mounting roadblocks as part of an anti-crime sweep.
Inevitably the questions of manpower and expenditure arise. The answer is that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, as the saying goes, and whether the military has the money is another matter, given the meagre defence budget. It is also true that we have – wrongly, I believe – many soldiers deployed in various far-away places on ineffective peace missions who could be better used at home.
Up to 2003 an effective and economical alternative was in place, in the form of more than 200 part-time commando units. These were specially trained and equipped, locally based, multiracial area-protection units which were permanently in support of the police. They had a dual role of the gendarmerie type: in time of war their role was to protect lines of communication and maintain area security, and in time of peace to act in support of the police.
Their advantage was that they did not require the infrastructure of full-time units and had a sound knowledge of their local areas. They performed yeoman service that took a great deal of weight off the SAP’s shoulders. Their finest hour was probably during the 1994 election, when thousands of commando members, all volunteers, were mobilised overnight to protect the ballot boxes and assist in maintaining order so that everyone could vote when it turned out that the SAP was about 35 000 men short of the minimum required.
Then, for some inexplicable reason, president Thabo Mbeki abruptly disbanded the area protection force, to the horror of the police, and thus the roots of the current crime wave were planted. Agreed, sometimes they were misused. But the bottom line was that the system was a sound one. So the overall answer to the present dispute is “yes, you can call in the military. But you have to do it right”. But there is no military quick fix.
ENOUGH SOLDIERS MUST BE DEPLOYED IN ENOUGH AREAS FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES SO THAT NORMALITY CAN RETURN TO AFFECTED AREAS