The Applicability of International Humanitarian Law in Peacetime Urban Civilian Operations: Analysing the Deployment of the Army to Fight Gang Violence in the Cape Flats

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates that over 50 million people across the globe are displaced as a result of urban conflicts, or armed conflict taking place within their cities. Such conflict situations place at risk not only civilian lives but civilian infrastructure and critical services as well. Given that over 50 per cent of the world’s population lives in cities, this is indeed a cause for concern. South Africa’s legislative capital, Cape Town, has had its fair share of this global nemesis, flowing from protracted gang ‘wars’ in the Cape Flats and years of government failure to contain the situation. The suffering of urban civilians in the Cape Flats area has been widely documented on various media platforms across South Africa and has even attracted the attention of Parliament. In response to this new urban scourge, some politicians called upon the national government to assist the obviously overwhelmed local law enforcement agencies by deploying the military to tackle gang-related violence. These calls were met with ambivalent responses from various sectors of society, with some supporting it, whilst others vehemently opposed the intervention of the armed forces in civilian following operations. The challenges flowing from the involvement of the army bring to bear the question(s): Is the army well suited for the fight against gang violence in the Cape Town urban area? What international regime regulates the deployment of military personnel in civilian policing functions? This article, through a desktop analysis of reports on gangsterism in the Cape Flats, seeks to close existing gaps in the literature on urban conflict and the use of the army in civilian policing functions; particularly in instances of what is termed ‘other situations of violence’.