South Africa to put soldiers on streets in two biggest economic hubs

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President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday said he would deploy the army to South Africa’s two biggest economic hubs in his government’s latest effort to rein in rampant violence.

In a state of the nation address in Cape Town’s parliament, in which he emphasised a stronger economic performance over the past year, Ramaphosa also conceded his government had to get a grip on service delivery, particularly in the crisis-struck water industry, as well as tackle crime.

“Organised crime is now the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development,” Ramaphosa said, adding that fighting crime syndicates would be a “primary focus this year”.

Officials were drawing up a plan for South African National Defence Force soldiers to be deployed “within the next few days . . . to deal with gang violence and illegal mining”, Ramaphosa said to applause from the gallery.

The deployment would be to the Western Cape and Gauteng provinces, he added. Cape Town and Johannesburg are their main cities.

The World Bank estimates crime drains about 10 per cent of GDP annually, while illegal mining in the world’s former top gold producer costs at least R70bn ($4.4bn) annually, according to government statistics.

Organised crime syndicates have flourished in recent years. Last month, British American Tobacco became the latest company to announce it would stop manufacturing in South Africa, citing profits undercut by a flood of illicit cigarettes.

Soldiers have been deployed to Cape Town, which is notorious for its gang violence, at least twice in the past decade.

In recent weeks, the Madlanga Commission into police corruption has unearthed shocking scandals about organised crime and its sometimes close ties to police and political elites.

Any successes from deploying soldiers have always been shortlived and failed to tackle root causes, said Ziyanda Stuurman, an analyst and security specialist at Africa Practice.

The latest announcement smacked of “a desperate ploy to move attention away from the constant stream of policing scandals . . . a few months before the local government elections”, she added.

During a nearly 90-minute speech, Ramaphosa said the economy had “turned a corner”, citing four consecutive quarters of GDP growth, lower interest rates, higher investment and the lowest inflation in 20 years.

Still, he acknowledged the economy needed to grow faster to tackle the country’s deep-seated social problems. “Despite this progress, we must be honest about the challenges that we still face,” he said.

The economy is estimated to have grown 1.2 per cent last year, double the rate of 2024, and growth is expected to rise again this year as business confidence improves.

Busisiwe Mavuso, chief executive of Business Leadership South Africa, said Ramaphosa’s optimism about the economy was “not baseless . . .  I really think we have done a brilliant job as a country in putting the necessary reforms in place that are now yielding results”.

But she said slow progress in areas such as the unbundling of the electricity grid and in the inability to get a grip on municipal finances could damp future prospects. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but we are not out of the woods.”

Ramaphosa also announced R156bn in public funding over the next three years to upgrade crumbling water infrastructure, which causes frequent water outages for millions of citizens.

“If a municipality is not willing or able to provide a service to its residents, it must be done by another structure that can,” he said, implying potential state intervention in failing local governments.