The recent deployment of 25,000 troops to help quell the unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng is expected to cost more than R600m, the defence committee heard on Sunday evening.
Most government departments have had to downsize their budgets to free financial resources needed by the state to fight the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the economy. MPs expressed concern about the amount and the fact that government was still unsure how to handle the unrest that started after the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma and soon escalated to looting and criminality.
The standing committee's co-chair, ANC MP Vusumuzi Xaba, bemoaned a lack of consensus on the problem. “I wonder if we, as a country, have the right target before us or are we just on a wild-goose chase? I'm just confused,” he said, raising contradictory remarks from cabinet members, including intelligence minister Ayanda Dlodlo and police minister Bheki Cele, on the true cause of the unrest.
Xaba said government was spending R600m on a problem it had not yet defined. “What is it that we are dealing with that we are pouring so much money into it? It has caused billions of rand of damage to our economy,” he said.
Defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told the committee that by 10am on Sunday, 21,252 members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) had been deployed, with 6,993 soldiers in Gauteng and 4,947 in KwaZulu-Natal. Excluding the Northern Cape, the remaining 9,585 soldiers were deployed in six other provinces, said the minister.
The cost of the deployment for one month, from July 12 to Aug. 12, is estimated at R615,665,000. Most of the MPs were stunned by the figure.
Three committee members queried the deployment, asking why fewer SANDF members were sent to the worst-hit province, KwaZulu-Natal, compared with Gauteng. “That's quite alarming to me,” said the DA's Dennis Ryder. “It just doesn't sound right and it doesn't look right,” said DA MP Sarel Marais.
Mapisa-Nqakula said widespread looting and violence was neither an attempted coup nor insurrection. “There is no coup here. There is no insurrection here. It is just counterrevolution which is now beginning to sow seeds of division in the country,” she said.
She insisted the South African state was under threat and, if recent events recurred, the army would “have to hit very hard” in response. “My view is people are testing the capacity of the state, and whether they can get away with it,” she said.
Acting presidency minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced 212 people were confirmed dead by Friday. Of those, more than 100 were suspected murders after civilians looted malls, warehouses, burnt down factories and barricaded highways, including the N2 and N3.
“I’m looking forward to a closed sitting where you can tell us exactly the mission and the objectives of these people you call counter-revolutionaries,” UDM leader Bantu Holomisa said.
On Friday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the attacks, which prompted the shutdown of the biggest shipping port in Africa and closed the economic corridor along the N3 from the south coast inland, amounted to “attempted insurrection” which had failed.
Responding to a question from PAC MP Moleboheng Modise on the source of the money, Mapisa-Nqakula said the president and finance minister presumably consulted before troops were deployed. “It is not the time to count pennies and cents. It was now time to move in, in a very speedily manner,” she said. The committee will inspect various KwaZulu-Natal areas on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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