Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Soldiers shouldn’t be used to police civilians and they have been trained to shoot to kill anyone pointing a gun at them, according to Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota.

Lekota yesterday said soldiers were neither trained nor equipped for policing the populace and emphasised that they would only be used to provide “back-up” to the police in controlling the xenophobic attacks.

“There has been a demand that the defence force should have done this or done that. But you can’t use soldiers to police civilians. I know that our immediate past experience of apartheid make people think this, but that was a dictatorship. And however much as we may panic about some of these things, it really has to be done the right way, otherwise you compound the problems,” he said.

“Everybody is being an expert about what the defence force should and can do – without checking what the law says and how the regulations work.”

He warned that his troops were trained with far heavier “equipment” than the 9mm “pop-guns” used by the police and that they did not carry handcuffs.

“The SANDF has a specific mandate to defend the country when it is under attack from enemies. Its members are therefore trained and equipped for that specific function. Nevertheless, the SANDF has a secondary function to support any other department that may for one reason or another be overwhelmed by its obligations.”

For instance, the defence force stepped in to keep hospitals running when public health workers embarked on a national wage strike last year.

He said the defence force regularly assisted during floods and other natural disasters, both locally and abroad. Lekota slammed those who had criticised the defence force for not acting sooner, pointing out that presidential approval is necessary for deployments.

More than 1 000 foreigners were being housed in military facilities, but this situation could only be sustained “for a limited period of time”.

Meanwhile, as fears rise of an looming health crisis among displaced refugees, the Health Department is considering declaring some disaster areas.

Health Director-General Thami Mseleku said they had noted the outbreak of diarrhoea in some of the shelters hosting refugees.

Reports said more than 60 people had fallen ill at a refugee shelter in Nyanga.

With refugee numbers swelling into thousands, aid agencies have warned of a health time-bomb.