South Africa will send military to combat criminal gangs.

Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, declared that he would send the army to assist the police in combating illegal mining and criminal gangs in the nation. In South Africa, which has one of the worst murder rates in the world, gang violence is a significant issue.

“Organised crime is now the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development,” Ramaphosa said in his annual State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday.

“I will be deploying the South African National Defence Force to support the police,” he added.

In a startling revelation that highlighted the severity of the nation’s crime problem, Police Minister Firoz Cachalia stated last month that the nation’s police were still unable to fight the lethal criminal gangs. Ramaphosa said in his speech to parliament that he had instructed the army and police chiefs to create a plan outlining the locations of “our security forces should be deployed within the next few days.”

He stated that due to an increase in gang violence and illicit mining, respectively, the military deployment would begin in the Western Cape and Gauteng provinces, which are home to the cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg.

“Children here in the Western Cape are caught in the crossfire of gang wars. People are chased out of their homes by illegal miners in Gauteng,” said Ramaphosa. Authorities blame illegal miners, known as “zama zamas”, typically armed, undocumented foreign nationals, for their involvement in organised crime syndicates.

Ramaphosa ruled out deploying troops to Cape Town just two weeks ago, saying soldiers were trained for combat and not community policing. He did not explain why he changed his mind but there have been increasing calls for him to take action to tackle gang violence.

Beyond the military deployment, Ramaphosa announced additional measures to combat crime, including recruiting 5,500 police officers, strengthening intelligence, and targeting crime syndicates.

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised nation, has long struggled with entrenched organised crime. Police data shows that an average of 63 people were killed each day between April and September last year.