Zuma’s go-ahead needed for soldiers to rejoin Operation Fiela
OPERATION Fiela-Reclaim will continue without the SANDF – for now – because President Jacob Zuma needs to authorise the soldiers’ renewed deployment, Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said yesterday.
The SANDF mandate to take part in the national anticrime operation, which started on April 21, expired at the end of June and the president, as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, has to permit the deployment of troops inside the country.
Under the constitution, the defence force’s primary objective is “to defend and protect the Republic, its territorial integrity and its people”.
“We haven’t yet received the directive (for redeployment),” said the defence minister.
Meanwhile, Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe condemned the killings of police officials – 58 have been killed this year.
He called the murders “an attack on the very foundation of our democracy”.
Radebe urged all South Africans to do their bit in the fight against crime – from joining community policing forums, street committees and neighbourhood watches to making anonymous tip-offs to the police.
“The work of reclaiming our public spaces from the hands of criminals isn’t the responsibility of the govern- ment alone,” Radebe said.
“The criminals live among us in communities. We know who they are.
“We should stop turning a blind eye towards criminality.”
Meanwhile, another police officer has been killed, this time in the Eastern Cape.
The officer, Sergeant Xola Sowambi, 35, was killed in Alice in the Eastern Cape on Saturday morning while on his way to work, according to police spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi.
Sowambi was allegedly hijacked, shot and killed before the suspects sped off in his vehicle. The police only discovered his body on Sunday in a farm in the Balfour area with a gunshot shot to his head.
The slain officer’s car was found on the R67 road between Fort Beaufort and Seymour. Mulaudzi said the police recovered a laptop which has since been linked to another hijacking in Hogsback last week.
The Acting National Head of the Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation (Hawks) Major-General Mthandazo Ntlemeza expressed shock at Sowambi’s murder.
“Hardly a day has passed commemorating our fallen heroes (and) we (are) mourning another death. This is not acceptable,” Ntlemeza said, adding that he had assembled a team of high level detectives to probe this murder. – Marianne Merten and Kgopi Mabotja