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MPs are pushing for the military deployment in Nelson Mandela Bay to be extended to Kwazakhele, questioning why the township repeatedly rocked by mass shootings was left off a plan meant to combat organised crime and gangsterism.
During a heated parliamentary briefing, MPs said Kwazakhele — the site of multiple mass murders in recent years — should be included.
On Tuesday, police launched a manhunt for the perpetrators of a shooting that claimed the lives of four young people in the Gqeberha township on Monday night.
The victims are Khensani Johnson, 24, and her brother, Nhlanhla, 21, as well as neighbours Sihle Menemene, 19, and his brother, Simamkele, 18.
The shooting took place in a back room at the Johnson family home in Tonjeni Street just after 9pm.
Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia, who appeared before a joint meeting of parliament’s police committee and petroleum and mineral resources committee on Wednesday, was put on the spot by MPs who demanded to know how SA’s crime intelligence capacity had deteriorated to the point where the military now had to support the police in the Bay and the Western Cape.
Presenting their plan, Major-General Mark Hankel, who is the project co-ordinator for the deployment as well as acting inspectorate divisional commissioner, told the committee that in the Eastern Cape, the military would be deployed in the Bay’s northern areas, Humansdorp and Jeffreys Bay.
“The deployment will also be addressing gangsterism in the Eastern Cape, specifically in the northern areas and in two police [precincts] in the Sarah Baartman district, being Humansdorp and Jeffreys Bay.
“This is actually a displacement in a way in terms of what is happening in the northern areas of the Nelson Mandela Bay metropole,” Hankel said.
EFF MP Natasha Ntlangwini questioned the priority areas, pointing out that Kwazakhele had not been mentioned despite the recent shootings.
“There are areas like Kwazakhele in [Gqeberha] which is also a hot spot area and I do not see it on the list of deployments,” she said.
The Kwazakhele police station is regularly among the top 30 police stations for recorded murders in the quarterly statistics released by the SAPS.
The SANDF intervention was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his state of the nation address last month.
National police commissioner Fannie Masemola appeared alongside Cachalia on Wednesday.
They were pressed on intelligence failures that allowed organised crime to become entrenched in the country, and on who would carry operational accountability should civilians be harmed during the troop deployment.
Cachalia said the deployment was already being rolled out but that the finer details could not be divulged.
He said it was not being presented as a panacea or a magic bullet but rather as a temporary stabilisation measure to create space for the implementation of a new organised crime strategy.
“There are capacity issues that have long plagued policing in this country — particularly in detective services and crime intelligence,” he said.
“The question now is what we are going to do about them.
“The reform and reset agenda is recognised by the leadership of the SAPS.
“The implementation of that strategy is going to require significant reorganisation, resourcing and rebuilding of operational capacity,” he said.
“I would say this, one way to think about this is that this country is in its FBI moment.”
He cautioned that high-visibility interventions — including the military deployment — would not be sufficient on their own.
“But you can see when you’re dealing with anti-gang violence and you’re dealing with gang violence, you’re dealing with illegal mining, that high visibility strategies, while important — and I would make the same point about the deployment of the army — are not sufficient.
“We must recognise the limits of law enforcement.
“The responsibility cannot rest only with the police service.
“There needs to be an all-of-government approach, with a strong focus on prevention and oversight to effectively tackle organised crime.”
Gauteng, North West and Free State have been identified as the targets of illicit mining.
EFF MP Leigh-Ann Mathys argued that the crisis within the police was not primarily about resources, but about leadership failures.
“This is about the weaponising of top-ranking officials in the SAPS,” she said.
“From what we have seen, they have been fighting factional battles and weaponising the criminal justice system instead of serving the people of the country.
“We should be ashamed and heartbroken that we have to send the SANDF to assist with something the SAPS is more than capable of doing.
“They’ve demonstrated that top officials are capable of the work — but they’re doing it against each other instead of against criminals.”
The DA’s Lisa-Maré Schickerling pushed for the specific operational breakdowns within the SAPS that necessitated military support.
“I would like to know which specific threat assessment triggered this deployment.
“What intelligence product informed it. And what measurable escalation justified invoking Section 201(2)(a).
“More importantly, what precise operational failures within the SAPS required military support.”
Schickerling asked whether the move was driven by the collapse of crime intelligence, a severe detective shortage, an inability to penetrate organised syndicates, or constraints within public order policing.
Gqeberha’s northern areas have been flashpoints for gang violence, with turf wars and retaliatory killings leaving communities on edge.
After a spate of high-profile kidnappings across the city, calls were made for the establishment of specialised units.
“Chairperson, most [police] stations have one working van over the weekend on an end-of-the-month weekend. They don’t have the capacity,” Schickerling said.
“So how is the SANDF going to be accompanied by the SAPS if we don’t even have enough officers to cover areas now?
“Are we going to withdraw officers from other areas and bring them into these areas.”
The MK party’s Jimmy Manyi said bringing in the SANDF signalled that police could no longer tackle organised crime on its own.
“If so, what long-term reforms are planned to rebuild the SAPS’s operational capacity?
“In terms of command and accountability, since both the SANDF and SAPS maintain their own command structures while co-ordinating through joint structures, who bears ultimate operational accountability should there be unlawful actions, operational failures or civilian harm during the deployment?”
Responding to the comments, Masemola said the new organised crime strategy would be implemented from April 1, with dedicated teams assigned to specific crime categories.
“We are going to implement an organised crime model with small, focused teams dealing with particular crimes — carjacking, extortion, cross-border vehicle crime, drugs and other organised crime dimensions,” he said.
Masemola said the deployment of the SANDF was aimed at stabilising gang-affected and illegal mining areas, while specialised police units worked to dismantle syndicates.
“Stabilisation happens within the gang and illicit mining areas, while organised crime teams deal with the gangs and other forms of organised crime,” he said.
He said SANDF operations would not draw officers from ordinary police stations, which would worsen existing shortages.
“It will not be a member from a police station deployed to work with the SANDF.
“It’s mostly specialised units — like the National Intervention Unit and the Special Task Force — that will deploy alongside the SANDF,” he said.
Masemola said implementation of the organised crime model would begin this month in the Western Cape and Gauteng.
An amount of R1bn had been allocated to the organised crime plan, part of which would cover national deployments linked to the operation.
However, the SANDF deployment itself was funded separately.
“The R1bn does not pay for the SANDF.
“The SANDF has its own budget, which I do not know how much it is,” he said.
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