Zuma shows the EFF who the ‘real’ commander in chief is

President Jacob Zuma’s Presidency announcement that he decided to deploy 441 SA National Defence Force soldiers to assist the SA Police Service in maintaining “law and order” on Thursday night in parliament has nothing if not an ominous ring of African dictatorship echoing from it.

To be perfectly honest, I have no recollection of this having happened before, though it might have. The SANDF has always showed up to state of the nation days before, but that always seemed little more than ceremonial – to show us a bit of smart, disciplined marching and some saluting of the president while the proud generals look on.

This year, though, it seems they’ll actually be working to “keep the peace”.

Breaking: President Zuma authorises employment of SANDF to "maintain law and order" at #SONA2017. pic.twitter.com/PzFhA57xiY

— Ranjeni Munusamy (@RanjeniM) February 7, 2017

The EFF’s leader likes to call himself the “Commander in Chief”, but here we can see what it really means to be a nation’s commander in chief and have an entire military at your disposal. Nice one, Mr President. Your army is so impressive. We also really like those noisy fighter jets you may or may not have helped to organise for us years ago through those nice arms dealers in Britain.

This is the same Zuma who refused to deploy the very same military into the Cape Flats when children were being gunned down daily in places not far from parliament, such as Manenberg, Lavender Hill and Hanover Park, by out-of-control gangsters in turf wars.

Zuma has now shown no such restraint in securing parliament and the area around it to ensure there are no protest marches to spoil his little talk about the state he’s put the nation in.

Whether it’s sinister or not, it’s bad public relations. This is the same increasingly securocratic government still trying to lay most of the consequence for Marikana on a social worker who found herself seriously out of her depth on August 16 2012.

Bringing in more guns as a solution is something that should only make “sense” in places like Somalia, where there’s no credible government to speak of and it’s only the guy with the most bullets who gets to give the orders.

The army boots are already on the ground, having started being deployed on Sunday. They’ll pack up and head back to their barracks on Friday once Zuma has escaped from behind DA-controlled “enemy lines”.

Secretary to Parliament Gengezi Mgidlana also failed to deny rumours that as many as 6 000 extra police officers will be working in and around parliament to deal with protests.

Obviously the army can’t stop the Economic Freedom Fighters or anyone from the other opposition parties from causing their usual ruckus in parliament. But the sum total of all the EFF’s MPs is 25 rowdy people in red overalls – so this SANDF deployment is probably more of a symbolic gesture, unless there are protests of a scale being planned that we have no idea of.

Perhaps our septuagenarian leader is getting a little paranoid during his last years in office and needs the safety blanket of hundreds of machine guns pointing towards his many real or perceived enemies to feel a little better about life. He certainly cruises around with way more bodyguards these days than he used to.

But Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki never needed the military intimidating anyone just to allow them to give a speech in peace.

In 2012, when Zuma refused to send in the army to quell the then raging gang wars, his government explained that “deploying the army among civilians would create the impression that South Africa was a military state”.

Hmm. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?

Charles Cilliers, Citizen.co.za digital editor