Author says recent soldier deaths tracking zama zamas show the military is ill-equipped to help cops, let alone fight full-scale conflict.
Image for illustrative purposes. Picture: Gallo Images.
In the ’90s in the East Rand townships, as ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party fought each other street to street for control, it was only the deployment of soldiers that restored order – because they employed the maximum force they were trained to do… on foes who were similarly armed, it must be said.
Today’s defence force deployments to control crime in “support of the civil power” as they are known, are different.
The threat level is not as high as it was in the ’90s, nor are representatives of authority often under threat, as they then were.
So, soldiers now cannot adopt the “rules of engagement” they were trained for: kill or be killed, effectively.
And, because they are in situations for which they are not trained, there are occasional mishaps and even deaths – as there have been recently – as troops have died in border control operations and efforts to track down underground zama zamas.
This does not mean, as some critics would have it, that our soldiers are untrained and useless. They are not.
However, because successive governments have bled the defence budget dry, the military is ill-equipped to help the cops, never mind engage in a full-scale conflict to protect the sovereignty of the country.
