Soldiers on the streets. What’s behind South Africa’s plan to deploy army in high-crime areas

Mihaela Măncilă

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — It’s an unusual move for the African continent’s leading democracy: South Africa’s president announced earlier this month that he will deploy the army to high-crime areas to fight the scourge of organized crime, gang violence and illegal mining . President Cyril Ramaphosa said soldiers would take to the streets — in places that have some of the world’s highest rates of violent crime — to combat what he described as the “most immediate threat” to South Africa’s democracy and