Johannesburg - The presence of soldiers on the ground during the July 2021 riots effectively brought the situation under control.
While their deployment was completed “the fastest ever”, there was a lack of cooperation by the KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner.
This is an assertion made by former and then defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
Her comments were carried out in the July unrest report released on Monday.
While provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi refuted the allegations, the presidential panel tasked with probing the violent civil unrest found that the then minister and SANDF commanders claimed there was no flow of information initially.
The panel’s report further painted a damning and bleak picture of the state’s inability to safeguard the nation and its people.
The SANDF was deployed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to assist the police who appeared to be overwhelmed by the surging crowds of looters.
During the night of Sunday, July 11, 2021, it is understood that the operational command of the SANDF received an instruction to deploy by Monday morning.
Initially, the government proposed that 2 500 members be deployed.
In the end, the number of soldiers was increased to 25 000.
The panel further found that the SANDF operational command was able to move “efficiently and in line with the instructions given”, once they had received the go-ahead.
“Having received the command on Sunday evening, they worked throughout the night and had started deploying by the next morning, the fastest ever in their history in a democratic South Africa,” the report read.
Furthermore, the panel found that although members of the SANDF moved as fast as they could, they were not equipped for riot control and could not meet all the expectations that the public had of them.
“There was no clarity initially on where the soldiers were to be deployed once they arrived on the scene, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal,” said the panel.
It hastened to point out that in KZN, the SAPS initially excluded the SANDF from intelligence briefings in particular the SANDF colonel was excluded from meetings, ostensibly due to his lower rank in comparison to his police counterparts.
As a result, the SANDF was not clear as to where to deploy its members.“There was no flow of information initially and, as a result, the minister deployed a general to engage with SAPS,” the report read.
The panel also found that in Mapisa-Nqakula’s interpretation of the deployment process, that Minister of Police Bheki Cele had to first ask her to deploy soldiers, was incorrect.
“With the executive not having fully appreciated the scale of the threat, it took political intervention by other actors to persuade the President to scale up the numbers. The initial hesitancy to deploy resulted in the violence spiralling further out of control and the debate over numbers caused some delays, though minor,” said the panel.
Among the listed recommendations, it suggested that the authorisation process for the employment of the SANDF, and the request to the President, must be streamlined to avoid unnecessary delays.
The panel also suggested that the best approach would be that, once the Minister of Police determined that the police needed the support of the army, the minister must immediately approach the President to authorise such, with details of how many SANDF members were needed and where.
The Minister of Defence will then get an instruction from the President to start preparing for the deployment, while the joint submission to the President is prepared.
“In such cases, emergency phone calls should be used, as long as the joint submission and the employment are in writing. Such a process can take less than an hour to finalise,” the recommendation read.
The panel further noted that ministers seemed to have been more directly involved in intelligence and operational work than their portfolios required, “giving the appearance of an element of executive overreach or interference”.
The panel said that, at best, the lines between the executive authorities and the security services seemed “blurred”.
It further commented on the perception that the SANDF arrived on the scene a little too late.
The panel found their deployment to national key points freed police officers to try and contain the riots.
The SANDF also brought the difficulties they had in rapidly procuring supplies for the deployed members to the panel’s attention, as a result of supply chain requirements.
The panel recommended this as a matter that the government must look into, to find ways of speedy procurement approvals, in cases where the security of the state was under threat.
Political Bureau