The phasing out of military commandos — announced by President Thabo Mbeki on Friday — would only undermine rural safety, Agri SA said.
President Japie Grobler said SA National Defence Force commandos played a crucial role in the rural safety plan.
”Phasing them out, while experience has shown how difficult they are to replace, will be negative for safety and negative for the country,” he said.
”It’s the old story of hundreds of plans being hatched while crime continues unabated.”
Institute for Security Studies director Jakkie Cilliers cautioned against any plan to abolish commandos before an effective alternative was in place.
”Commandos have traditionally been functioning as a blanket of support in rural safety,” he said.
In his state-of-the-nation address in Parliament, Mbeki said measures would be taken to ensure structures such as commandos and police reservists were properly regulated to do what they were set up for. ”In this regard, in order to ensure security for all in the rural areas, including the farmers, government will start in the near future to phase out SANDF commandos, at the same time as we
create in their place, a new system whose composition and ethos accord with the requirements of all rural communities.”
Grobler said the idea was not new to Agri SA, and was discussed with the union more than a year ago. At the time, the plan was to recruit thousands of reservists to
take over the role of commando’s over a period of between six to 10 years.
”But little came of that recruitment drive. Now they are once again talking about a new system to replace commandos. The end-result will only be a bigger safety vacuum in rural areas,” Grobler said.
”The problem of farm killings and attacks will just remain with us.”
Grobler said he suspected that commandos were being seen as an old-order system dominated by whites. ”That is no longer the case. Commandos have become fairly representative.”
Cilliers said the fight against crime in general might also suffer if commandos should disappear. ”The government is struggling to recruit enough reservists,
which means that military support for the police remains vital.”
Commandos operating in rural areas to curb lawlessness enabled the police to deploy more staff for the battle against crime in urban areas.
Perceptions that misconduct was rife among members of commandos were not accurate.
”There were only isolated incidents of this nature,” Cilliers said. – Sapa