It has been seven years since President Jacob Zuma gave his first State of the Nation address, and in that time the number of police, soldiers and security officials has steadily increased.
From 2003 until 2011, there were no joint police and army operations for the address, according to documents obtained by a Promotion of Access to Information request to the South African National Defence Force by the South African History Archive.
But now things are different. On Thursday, the state’s security apparatus saturated Cape Town’s city centre in the hours leading up to the president’s address. The police’s public order, tactical response, K9 dog squad and other officers have joined the Cape Town metro police and soldiers, who are out in full force.
The authorities are controlling movement tightly and are questioning motorists who are attempting to reach the parliamentary precinct. Roads around the Grand Parade are blocked off with steel fences and armed police patrol the area.
Walking in groups of up to 20 — and sometimes outnumbering civilians in the city centre — the security presence has brought traffic to a standstill and kept hawkers and passersby on high alert, careful not to attract their scrutiny.
At nearly every traffic light around the precinct, uniformed police officers are present. In every available parking lot, there are marked police cars, vans used to hold arrested suspects and trucks used to ferry suspects to courts. There are even Nyalas.
The presence of unmarked police vehicles and plain-clothed officers is also apparent.
Most of the officers carry standard-issue police weapons, which include handguns, R1 semiautomatic rifles, BXP submachine guns and Musler 12-gauge shotguns used to fire rubber bullets and tear gas grenades.
Protests were expected near the parliamentary precinct and, as the time for the president’s address draws nearer, most officers can be seen moving closer to the Grand Parade, visiting shops or standing on street corners, watching hundreds of ANC supporters gathering for the party’s parallel event.
As the day has progressed, it remains unclear what the security forces are meant to achieve. Despite their intimidating presence and the anxiety this appears to produce among civilians, the police seem to have been useful for little more than crowd control in the hours leading up to Zuma’s address.
The soldiers remain outside the parliamentary precinct, standing in formation, clutching their rifles.
In the past four years, the number of soldiers deployed to the State of the Nation address has increased — from 168 in 2013 to 188 in 2015 and to 441 this year, according to the speaker, Baleka Mbete, and MPs can’t explain why.
“The fact that, this year, there are 441. Parliament cannot explain the difference from 168 in 2013. Earlier on in our meeting with the chief whips, we undertook to find out why the numbers had increased, because we ourselves cannot explain it,” the National Council of Provinces chairperson, Thandi Modise, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The constitutionality of deploying soldiers for law and order has also been questioned. Constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos said on Wednesday that the separation of powers had seemingly been breached.
“The executive cannot deploy the army to another branch of government, the legislature,” De Vos said.
The joint police and army operation was said to include 6 000 police officers (Parliament has dodged the claim) to accompany the soldiers.
According to the Democratic Alliance provincial legislature leader, John Moodley, 20 officers and 18 motorbikes from the Gauteng traffic police had also been sent down for the address.
In a letter sent to Parliament a week earlier, the presidency said the army had been deployed “to maintain law and order” — something that, according to the Constitution, is the job of the police.
The president was not forthcoming on why the police needed military back-up to perform its core function.
In the absence of any reasonable explanation, commentators have concluded that the soldiers are there to intimidate Zuma’s critics.
Meanwhile, Parliament said there was no need to worry about security in the House.
In 2016, the Constitutional Court declared it was unconstitutional for the police to be called into Parliament to remove MPs who were being disruptive.
Debate is crucial for the performance of Parliament’s functions and should not be stifled.
“Unless all enjoy the right to full and meaningful contribution, the very notion of constitutional democracy is warped,” said Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga on behalf of a unanimous court.
This week, the secretary of Parliament, Gengezi Mgidlana, said: “The idea of securitisation of Parliament or increased security of Parliament is false. It’s not correct and it doesn’t have foundation at all. It’s not forming part of our own thinking.”
In recent years, there have also been attempts to restrict media coverage at the State of the Nation address.
In September last year, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that Parliament’s use of signal jammers to disrupt broadcast and cellphone signals in 2015 was unlawful. “The Constitution … affords all South Africans the right to see and hear what happens in Parliament,” the court ruled.
Four months after that, however, the State Security Agency (SSA) reportedly interfered in Parliament’s media accreditation process.
The Daily Maverick reported that it had seen an email saying that the SSA wanted media members to supply particular information on the forms. “Attached is the template with the information required by the State Security Agency for accreditation,” the email read.
The Daily Maverick said the accreditation forms that were finally sent to journalists were similar to the template the SSA wanted.
In a press conference on Thursday, journalists questioned Mgidlana about the “media squares” to which they would be confined.
In previous years, journalists were free to roam around the parliamentary precinct during the address. But this year they were required to have an escort. Mgidlana said the escorts would not be members of the security cluster.
“It will not be any State Security Agency, SAPS [South African Police Service] or South African National Defence Force [officials]. If anything at all, our officials will be assisted by government communication and information systems officials.”
The dream of 1994 was that Parliament would be a safe place for South Africans to hold leaders to account. The dream was that, never again, would we see the army on our streets — a soldier with a machine gun facing down a youth with a stone.
‘You will never know why soldiers were deployed’
The argument will go something like this. The State of the Nation address (Sona) is the only scheduled event at which essentially all the members of all three arms of government gather in one place: the heads and deputies of the executive, the legislature and the heads of the judiciary, and just about everyone below them who could succeed them. If some terrible event were to strike, be it man-made or natural, it would amount to a decapitation of the nation.
So, for this one special day, extreme precautions and preparations are justified.
That is always the case, of course. So why would the 2015 Sona require 188 soldiers as part of those preparations, and this year’s more than 441? None of your business, that’s why.
“This kind of deployment is based on a security plan that is based on a threat assessment,” said a source with intimate knowledge of such planning this week. “You will never see that assessment. It can never be made public.”
The logic is circular and unyielding. Soldiers are required because of a security threat. Details of the security threat must remain secret, because exposing it is a security threat.
A threat from, say, a political party to disrupt proceedings, would not constitute a threat that requires military deployment, another state security expert said. That is strictly a job for police with at least theoretical training in public-order policing. If the army is deployed on the back of such a threat, that could be an important constitutional issue.
“If the security preparations are over the top, maybe the public has a right to know who is threatening the people’s Parliament,” said the source.
Why, exactly, a large contingent of soldiers would be required to secure Parliament puzzled many experts this week. It was probably not because of any sort of para-military threat, however.
“In our day there was always a robust security operation in place around the opening of Parliament,” said Rory Steyn, a close protection bodyguard to Nelson Mandela during the late 1990s, when elements of the far right were actively plotting his assassination. “But to my knowledge soldiers never played anything other than a ceremonial role.” — Phillip de Wet