President Cyril Ramaphosa says the military will work with the country’s police force to counter ‘gang wars’ that threaten ‘our democracy’.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he will deploy the army to work alongside the police to tackle high levels of gang violence and other crimes in the country.
Ramaphosa said on Thursday that he had directed the chiefs of the police and army to draw up a plan on where “our security forces should be deployed within the next few days in the Western Cape and in Gauteng to deal with gang violence and illegal mining”.
“Organised crime is now the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development,” the president said in his annual state of the nation address. Children here in the Western Cape are caught in the crossfire of gang wars. People are chased out of their homes by illegal miners in Gauteng,” he told Parliament in his address. I will be deploying the South African National Defence Force to support the police,” he said.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with approximately 60 deaths each day involving killings in wars between drug gangs in areas of Cape Town and mass shootings linked to illegal mining in Johannesburg’s Gauteng province.
