House Chair, in the mid eighties when the late former President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, called on the youth of the country to render the apartheid fascist regime ungovernable, the first response what to unleash the army and declare the state of emergency. What we did was to emasculate the army, neutralise it and force it to abandon the guns and instead bring bioscopes and things such as those - that was the way of dealing with the enemy, and subject it to conditions of battle chosen by the people themselves.
The deployment of the army in Cape Town is a short-term measure that will not address the real cause of what leads to gangsterism. We must deal with the underlying socioeconomic
conditions of homelessness, landlessness, joblessness and poverty in Khayelitsha, Philippi, Nyanga, Hanover Park, Manenberg and other places to uproot the senseless killing of our people. The army is a short-term measure. Minister, you must understand that first and foremost you must win the battle in the minds of the people before you win it on the ground. But also, the fact is that the Minister of Police has announce deployment of solders without written approval from the President who command soldiers and now soldiers are waiting to receive written instruction - that demonstrate lack of planning and coherent approach. You need intelligence services, the police and the army to approach this matter based on a practical and well-thought-out plan, otherwise we will turn these townships and turn them into war zones with no end in sight.
In the immediacy of putting a proper perspective on the envisaged military defence policy and strategy on one hand, and military industrial complex on the other, the EFF is called upon to set itself apart from the rest of other liberal and revisionist, narrow parliamentary parties which are represented
here which uses Parliament for narrow and reactionary parliamentary manoeuvre. And this how we set ourselves apart.