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 economic development.
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South African National Defense Forces deploy in the Riverlea township of Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
South African National Defense Forces deploy in the Riverlea township of Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
South African National Defense Forces deploy in the Riverlea township of Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
FILE - Julius Mthembu points to the glimmering gold in an abandoned gold mine in Roodepoort, South Africa, Nov. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
FILE - Siphelele Dyasi digs at an abandoned gold mine in Roodepoort, South Africa, Nov. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
FILE - South African National Defense Forces patrol the Men's Hostel in the densely populated Alexandra township east of Johannesburg, Saturday, March 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
FILE - South African Defense Forces patrol downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, March 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
FILE - South African Defense Forces patrol downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, March 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
He said the deployment would happen in three of the country’s nine provinces, without giving a timeline. Some critics, however, say the army deployment could be seen as an admission that Ramaphosa's government is losing the battle.
With a population of some 3.8 million, the stunningly beautiful Cape Town is South Africa's second-largest city and one of its top tourist attractions.
But the neighborhoods on its outskirts, known as the Cape Flats, are notorious for deadly gang violence.
Street gangs with names such as the Americans, the Hard Livings and the Terrible Josters have for years battled for control of the illegal drug trade, while also being involved in extortion rackets, prostitution and contract killings.
Bystanders, including children, are often caught in the crossfire and killed in gang-related shootings. According to the latest crime statistics, South Africa's three police precincts with the most serious crime rates are all in and around Cape Town.
Ramaphosa said one part of the army would deploy in the Western Cape province, where Cape Town is located and which statistics say has around 90% of the country's gang-related killings.
Two other provinces, he said, would also see troop deployments: Gauteng, which is home to Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city, and the Eastern Cape province.
The outskirts of Johannesburg and the wider Gauteng province are dotted with abandoned mine shafts and authorities there have long grappled with illegal gold mining.
They say the mining gang, known as zama zamas, are typically run by heavily armed crime syndicates, brutal in protecting their operations. They use “informal miners” recruited from desperate and impoverished communities to go into the shafts, searching for leftover precious deposits.
These gangs are often connected to high-profile violence, including a 2022 case that shocked South Africa when around 80 alleged illegal miners were accused of gang raping eight women who were part of a music video shoot at an abandoned mine.
Last year, a standoff between police and illegal miners in an abandoned mine left at least 87 miners dead after police took a hard-line approach and cut off their food supplies in an attempt to force them out.
The illegal miners are often involved in other crimes in nearby communities, analysts say, and turf battles between rival gangs have forced people to leave their homes and seek safety elsewhere.
Authorities say there are an estimated 30,000 illegal miners in South Africa, operating in some of its 6,000 abandoned mine shafts.
The government has noted an increase in illegal mining, which it estimates is worth more than $4 billion a year in gold lost to criminal syndicates.
The trade is believed to be predominantly controlled by migrants from neighboring Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, stoking anger among South African communities against both the criminal bosses and foreigners living in the local community.
Ramaphosa is well aware that South Africans old enough to remember the years of forced racial segregation under the apartheid system, which ended in 1994, likely will recall images of troops deployed to suppress pro-democracy protests.
Mindful of that painful past, he said it was important not to deploy the army “without a good reason.”
But he said it has now "become necessary due to a surge in violent organized crime that threatens the safety of our people and the authority of the state.”
Ramaphosa sought to calm concerns by saying the army would operate under police command.
There have been other recent deployments of South African troops. In 2023, soldiers fanned out into the streets after a series of truck burnings raised concerns over wider public disorder. And around 25,000 troops were deployed in 2021 to quell violent riots sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma.
South Africa also used soldiers to enforce strict lockdown rules during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Crime experts have expressed concern over Ramaphosa's latest deployment plans, insisting the army is not a long-term solution to fighting crime and soldiers are not experts in domestic law enforcement.
Firoz Cachalia, the country's police minister, has backed Ramaphosa and insisted the army will act in support of police and "their operations in particular locations.”
He said the deployment is time-limited and meant to stabilize areas “where people are losing their lives” every day.
Associated Press writer Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
South African National Defense Forces deploy in the Riverlea township of Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
South African National Defense Forces deploy in the Riverlea township of Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
South African National Defense Forces deploy in the Riverlea township of Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
FILE - Julius Mthembu points to the glimmering gold in an abandoned gold mine in Roodepoort, South Africa, Nov. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
FILE - Siphelele Dyasi digs at an abandoned gold mine in Roodepoort, South Africa, Nov. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
FILE - South African National Defense Forces patrol the Men's Hostel in the densely populated Alexandra township east of Johannesburg, Saturday, March 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
FILE - South African Defense Forces patrol downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, March 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
FILE - South African Defense Forces patrol downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, March 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The war with Iran, for all its complexity and global effects, boils down to a single question: Who can take the pain the longest?
A surge in oil prices points to what may be Iran’s most effective weapon and the United States’ biggest vulnerability in continuing the campaign: Damaging the world economy. A sharp rise in gas prices has rattled consumers and financial markets, and international travel and shipping have been severely disrupted.
U.S. President Donald Trump appears aware of the danger. As oil jumped to nearly $120 a barrel on Monday, the highest since 2022, he suggested the war would be “short-term.” That helped reassure markets and the price eased to around $90 — even as Trump, nearly in the same breath, vowed to keep up the war and the punishment on Iran.
On the other side, Iran has to endure a near-constant stream of American and Israeli airstrikes it can’t defend against. So far, the Islamic Republic is still in control, with leadership passing from the ayatollah slain in the war’s opening strikes to his son. Although its military has been hit extensively, it continues to launch missiles and drones across the region.
The Iranian public, which already rose up against its theocracy in nationwide protests in January, still boils in anger but have stayed home as they try to survive the heavy bombardment. Security forces have been on the street every day to ensure no anti-government demonstrations form.
The pressure is on U.S. allies as well. Gulf Arab states, while still not combatants in the war, face seemingly unending and occasionally fatal Iranian fire targeting oil fields, cities and critical water works. And Israel, while boasting of inflicting heavy damage on Iran’s missile program and other military targets, continues to be targeted by increasingly sophisticated Iranian missiles that send a buckshot-like bouquet of high explosives raining down on its cities. Frequent air-raid sirens have disrupted daily life, closed schools and workplaces and created a tense atmosphere across the region.
There’s no immediate end to the war in sight — nor in the rhetoric coming from both America and Iran, whose bad blood extends back decades to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.
“We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” Trump said in a speech Monday in Doral, Florida. “We go forward, more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long running danger once and for all.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry official Kazem Gharibabadi offered a mirror image comment from Tehran, boasting that the Islamic Republic had rejected contacts about a ceasefire that he said had come from China, France, Russia and others.
“At the moment, we hold the upper hand,” Gharibabadi told Iranian state television late Monday night. “Just look at the state of the global economy and energy markets — it has been very painful for them.”
He asserted that it was Iran that “will determine the end of the war.”
For years before Israel and the U.S. launched the war on Feb. 28, Iran warned that, if attacked, it would retaliate on the entire Middle East, targeting the oil infrastructure that made its Gulf Arab neighbors fantastically wealthy. By contrast, Tehran's economy has been crippled by international sanctions.
Iran has now backed up its threat with barrages of missiles and drones. Qatar was forced to halt its production of natural gas, and Bahrain declared its oil operations couldn’t meet their contractual obligations. Other producers like Saudi Aramco are affected, disrupting a key source of energy for Asia — particularly China, which has sent a top envoy to the region.
Shipping broadly has stopped in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded passes, and up to 30% of world fertilizer exports. Iran didn’t need to mine the waterway — its attacks on several ships prompted companies stop sending their vessels through the strait.
Trump has suggested U.S. warships providing escorts to tankers, but that has yet to materialize in a way to restart the traffic.
Early Tuesday morning, he threatened that if Iran stops the oil through the strait, “they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
“Additionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them — But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Iran, however, only doubled down. The Revolutionary Guard warned on Tuesday that it won’t allow “a single liter of oil” to leave the Persian Gulf.
For Iran's theocratic rulers, victory means surviving the campaign still in power, no matter the costs to the country and the region.
Trump has been vague and contradictory about his aims in the war. At times, he seems to push for overthrowing Iran's theocracy; other times, he seems to be willing to stop short of that, saying broadly that he wants to ensure Iran is no longer a threat to Israel, the region and the U.S.
That could give him flexibility in declaring that victory has been achieved, especially if real damage starts to show to the U.S. economy.
But if the war stopped right now, both the U.S and Israel would be left with major challenges.
One is Iran’s leadership. After an Israeli airstrike killed 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war, Iranian clerics named his 56-year-old son Mojtaba to the position, elevating him to the rank of an ayatollah.
Now Iran’s ultimate ruler, the younger Khamenei has long been viewed by analysts as being even more hard-line than his father, with close ties to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Israel already described him as a target in its campaign, while Trump has said he wanted someone else in the role.
Also, Iran still has its stockpile of highly enriched uranium – one reason for the war that Israel and the U.S. have both pointed to. Iran had been enriching up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
The U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear sites in June during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, likely burying much of the stockpile in the debris. Those sites to this day remain out of the reach of international inspectors.
Mojtaba Khamenei could issue a religious ruling, or fatwa, reversing his father’s earlier statements and ordering it to be used to make a weapon. That’s something both America and Israel, long believed to be the Mideast’s only nuclear-armed state, don’t want to see.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the Mideast and the wider world since joining AP in 2006.
FILE - People gather in a rally to support Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the successor to his late father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader, in Tehran, Iran, March 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Plumes of smoke rise as strikes hit the city during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Drivers navigate a busy intersection past a sign displaying the current gas prices at a filling station in Plano, Texas, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
FILE - Policemen stand on top of their car with pictures of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right and left, and his son Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the successor to him, center, during a rally to support him in Tehran, Iran, March 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A plume of smoke rises after a strike in Tehran, Iran, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohsen Ganji, File)
