I support the DA’s call for the military to be deployed in cape Town to deal with drug lords and gangsters.
1. I also support the deployment of the military in all Provinces of SA to deal with crime and serve as a deterrent to heavily armed criminals;
2. In Lenasia, we have a situation of repeat violent and forcible crime on the same businesses and houses. It’s clear, the police do need help, they can’t win this fight on their own. To illustrate, we’ve had numerous ATM bombings here in Lenasia. The first response, is your typical police van which has 2 policemen. One armed with a service pistol and his colleague with a service pistol and some automatic rifle. Some security car will also respond, with one occupant with 1 pistol. Now, in stark contrast, you have a gang of heavily armed men, who have 2 to 3 high performance cars and are armed with ak 47’s r1 or r5 rifles. There do things in military style i.e. about 5 of these heavily armed men, positioned at various points on the road and sidewalks waiting for the police to arrive. The rest attend to the actual crime and deal with whatever resistance they receive their. The results are clear, the criminals are winning and getting away and the police and security are wounded or killed;
3. The military has specialized armor plated and bullet proof vehicles, they also have an array of special weapons. They equipped to deal with such an armed gang;
4. These heavily armed gangs are brazen because they know the police and security don’t have the specialized weapons and vehicles to deal with them;
5. We not in a state of war! What is our military really doing every day! They should be deployed on a permanent basis. They will serve as a deterrent as these armed gangs will think twice;
6. You must appreciate that there is a difference between a terrorist and a criminal where the former doesn’t care whether he lives or dies and has no pecuniary financial motive for his acts whereas the latter cares very much that he lives and has the motive of money, he wants to live to spend such money. If criminals become aware that they will be met with heavily armed response from soldiers, police, security companies and certain legally armed residents as one force, I doubt they’ll even try!