Truck attacks: SAPS ‘growing increasingly desperate’ for SANDF help

The SA Police Service (SAPS) is set to reach out to the armed forces in a bid to quell a spate of truck attacks this month. Up to 30 lorries have been vandalised, looted, or torched in a series of co-ordinated strikes, linked to rising tensions over foreign workers. It now seems SANDF will be required to intervene.

SANDF courted to prevent truck attacks

It’s been reported by eNCA that SAPS have already begun submitting their paperwork for the army to help patrol major trucking routes and crime hot-spots. The application, allegedly, also requests for SANDF assistance in their wider ‘festive operations’, for things like roadblocks and a clamp-down on drunk drivers.

Of course, the armed forces were put on a mass deployment to enforce the rules of ‘hard lockdown earlier this year – and POPCRU, the major police union in South Africa, are fully on board with enlisting soldiers to help them in this battle.

#Trucks Police union POPCRU says its members need assistance from the SANDF to help better respond to the attacks on truck drivers.

— RIOT & ATTACK info South Africa (@RiotAndAttackSA) November 30, 2020

Not everyone is on board with army assistance, however

SAPS also previously requested SANDF assistance alongside the Western Cape Government in 2019. Soldiers were deployed to the Cape Flats, in a bid to eradicate the rampant gang violence that terrorises these regions. The results were mixed at best, but that hasn’t dampened their belief that the army can make a difference in tackling these truck attacks.

Herman Mashaba, however, remains unconvinced. The Action SA leader and former Mayor of Johannesburg says that the deployment of SANDF is ‘unsustainable’, and that better immigration controls are the best way to limit such crimes.

“South Africa must adopt a sustainable and affordable approach in dealing with this threat unlike the deployment of SANDF: Let Home Affairs affect their Constitutional mandate to control our Immigration Laws. Simple.”

Herman Mashaba