KZN army general marches to fight against the spread of coronavirus

“WE may not be much knowledgeable in terms of what happens around this disease, but we know that there is no cure or vaccine, the only weapon that we have is our behaviour.”

These are the sentiments shared by the interim KZN General Officer Commander, Brigadier-General Siphiwo Dlomo, who recently spoke to the SUN about his Covid-19 related deployment.

He said a change in behaviour and attitude to allow certain things to unfold, difficult as they may be, are something’s communities needed to adapt to in the wake of flattening the curve.

Dlomo serves under an operation intended to fight against the spread of the coronavirus, namely Ops Notlela, which oversees patrol deployments.

Under his command, he has ground forces that are responsible for patrols and state deployments in support of SAPS, a naval unit which is responsible for patrolling oceans, a medical services unit which includes medical personnel and the air force, although not assigned to his command, is able to access its services when necessary.

“Originally, our responsibility lies in the boarder and externally, we are people who belong to the bush. This operation is something that is more or less foreign to how we do business.

“Its proximity to civilians is why we needed to adjust ourselves and find traction in terms of interacting with the communities and people but I think we are there now, there is no excuse for failure, we can’t be saying we are learning anymore,” he said, adding that so far people understood and fully complied with officers.

“At the end of the day, when the vaccine is found, we want people to say, ‘thank you’ instead of ‘good riddance’.”

“The work that we are doing is also dangerous to us, but we need to do this work because we love the community that we serve and in my case, I have not seen my family for almost a month but they also encourage us to do best because they understand that this is what our work involves,” he said.

Dlomo said the focal areas for the next two to three weeks will be retail shops and centres, paying specific attention to Isipingo, Umlazi, Chatsworth and Folweni. He said Ops Notlela will be in support of the police and the Department of Health during their awareness outreach campaigns.

While reports of brutality may have cast a shadow on their work, he said he did not condone that behaviour as it contradicts given orders.

“Before this deployment started, there was a very comprehensive instruction of what needed to be done and that unequivocally excludes beating anyone. It is not contained in any of the documents.”

“We try to hub and hammer that to members daily because our defence relies on the adherence and compliance on the instruction and the code of conduct. If any member deviates, he is not executing what the defence force instructed us to do.”

He said Ops Notlela will contribute to a water purification assistance programme in Mtubatuba as well as having bridges built to allow the flow and distribution of food parcels to take place even in remote areas.

“We would appreciate if our communities continue to see us as instruments that they requested to assist in the prevention of the spread of Covid-19 and therefore all the regulations that have been put in place. Our wish is that our people could just internalise, own and implement them voluntarily so that we can continue teaching other people and be able to attend communities in rural areas. This includes the use of masks as it is important that we all adhere to this,” he said.

This information was coordinated with the Communication Officer of Army Support Base KZN, Major Musa Nhlumayo.

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