Operation Fiela: President Zuma must explain SANDF extension without delay
8 July 2015
The DA notes with concern the government’s decision to extend the South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF) participation in Operation Fiela until the end of March 2016.
The DA will write to President Jacob Zuma requesting he brief Parliament on the reasons for extending the SANDF’s involvement in Operation Fiela and will not support this move until Mr Zuma, as Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Force, acts in this regard.
In terms of section 201(3) of the Constitution he must do so promptly and in appropriate detail. Given that Parliament is in recess, section 201(4) of the Constitution prescribes that the President should notify the appropriate oversight committee – that is, the Joint Standing Committee on Defence.
I will thus also be writing to the Chairperson of the Committee to request that members of the Committee are furnished with any notification received by the President without delay in order to properly understand the grounds on which this extension is being made.
This comes after reports confirmed that “the involvement of soldiers in Government’s national anti-crime effort Operation Fiela has been extended and will continue until March 31 next year.” The military’s deployment to Operation Fiela was as a result of the waning capacity of the South African Police Service (SAPS) amid the xenophobic violence and a spike in crime earlier this year that put extra strain on the SAPS which then needed the support of the Defence Force.
This deployment was not for the military to carry out the routine policing duties of the SAPS as seems to be the case.
If reports are to be believed, the SANDF’s involvement and the extension thereof is deeply distressing because it appears as though the President has effectively deployed the military within our borders to deal with routine policing matters.
It has always been the DA’s ardent contention that the military may be deployed domestically only in exceptional circumstances as an auxiliary to the SAPS as is consistent with section 201(2)(a) of the Constitution.
Day-to-day crime-fighting does not constitute exceptional circumstances. Therefore the Defence Force presently has no legitimate purpose to be deployed within our borders; never mind the extension of such a service unless President Zuma can provide clarity to the contrary.
Since the first explosions of crime and xenophobic violence that erupted earlier this year, things seem to have subsided which would ordinarily mean that the SANDF needn’t continue in Operation Fiela and that it would be for the SAPS to manage going forward.
This extension of the SANDF’s involvement in Operation Fiela has the formative rumblings of a military state where the Defence Force is unleashed on the very people they are there to serve and protect.
President Jacob Zuma must account to Parliament and the public without delay to explain the reasons for extending such a service.
Statement issued by Kobus Marais MP, DA Shadow Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, July 8 2015
