During the State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Cyril Ramaphosa said he had directed the police and the SANDF to tackle gang violence and illegal mining in the Western Cape, Gauteng and Eastern Cape.
Image: Henk Kruger/Independent Newspapers
While the cost of deploying the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to support the South African Police Service (SAPS) in tackling gang violence and illegal mining in the Western Cape, Gauteng and Eastern Cape is unknown, Finance Minister Godongwana shared how their deployment will be afforded.
During the State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Cyril Ramaphosa said he had directed the Minister of Police, Firoz Cachalia and the SANDF to develop a technical plan on where the security forces should be deployed within the forthcoming days.
Ramaphosa said that, given the country’s history, where the apartheid state sent the army into townships to violently suppress opposition, “it is important that we do not deploy the SANDF inside the country to deal with domestic threats without good reason”.
“This recent deployment has become necessary due to a surge in violent organised crime that threatens the safety of our people and the authority of the state. That is why the SANDF will be deployed in support of the SAPS, operating under police command, with clear rules of engagement and for specific time-limited objectives,” Ramaphosa said.
“Like many other areas of the state, the SANDF has for several years been operating under significant financial constraints due to the poor state of our public finances. As our financial position stabilises, we are working to close funding gaps and strengthen the readiness of our armed forces.”
As for where the money comes from to make the SANDF deployment a reality, Godongwana on Wednesday addressed this during a press briefing before his Budget speech.
The Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in Parliament delivering the Budget Speech 2026.
Image: Phando Jikelo/Parliament RSA
Godongwana said that if a war were to break out, and the president instructed him to find resources to support the SANDF, he would then turn to Section 16 of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), which governs the use of funds in emergency situations.
“So it is something that operates around those lines. What we are waiting for now is for the SANDF, together with the police, to develop a crime strategy, which I suspect they have taken to the National Security Council, which will table it to Cabinet.
“How much would that be? We would have to examine those numbers (to see)… It’s the nature of budgets that normally those numbers would change.”
Previously, the three-month deployment of the 1,320 SANDF soldiers to the Cape Flats crime hotspots in 2019 cost the state approximately R23.4m.
theolin.tembo@inl.co.za