A look at South Africa’s extreme move to deploy the army to fight crime, by the numbers

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africa’s president has authorized a yearlong deployment by the army to fight crime in some of the country’s violence-stricken areas.

The move has underlined how Africa’s leading economy has struggled to reign in its high rates of violent crime.

A look at the deployment by the numbers:

South Africa’s Constitution requires President Cyril Ramaphosa to advise Parliament of his order to deploy the army. He said in a notice to lawmakers that 2,200 soldiers have been deployed to assist police in law enforcement operations relating to two specific criminal threats: gang-related violence and illegal mining run by criminal syndicates.

The soldiers will be deployed on the streets from March 1 this year to March 31, 2027, Ramaphosa said.

While some opposition parties initially questioned the cost of the operation, Ramaphosa’s decision to use the army against crime has largely been welcomed. Some crime-weary communities cheered soldiers on the streets of the country’s biggest city of Johannesburg when they were first deployed last week.

Soldiers will be deployed in five of South Africa’s nine provinces. They include Gauteng, the economic hub where Johannesburg is, and the Western Cape, where the second biggest city of Cape Town is located.

The army will also work to combat crime in the North West, Free State and Eastern Cape provinces.

Ramaphosa said the deployment will focus specifically on helping police with the problems of gang-related violence and illegal mining.

Gang violence leads to hundreds of homicides a year in South Africa, especially in the poor neighborhoods known as the Cape Flats on the outskirts of South Africa’s top tourist city of Cape Town.

Authorities estimate there are around 30,000 illegal miners operating in some of South Africa’s 6,000 disused gold and other mines. The mining gangs are often armed and violent in protecting their territory and are controlled by criminal syndicates, authorities say.

Ramaphosa said gang violence and illegal mining are the two organized crimes that most threaten South Africa’s democracy and economic development.

Police, who will be in charge of the soldiers during the law enforcement deployment, say they have four key operational objectives: reduce crime in designated problem areas, arrest offenders, recover illegal firearms and explosives, and confiscate narcotics.

This is not the first time South Africa has used the army to fight crime, though it is the longest deployment in recent years. In 2023, Ramaphosa deployed more than 3,000 soldiers for a month to certain crime hot spots.

Later the same year, the army was deployed after a series of truck burnings on major roads stoked fears of wider civil unrest.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

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