BusinessLive reports that as the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic intensifies, President Cyril Ramaphosa is seeking to increase the number of soldiers on SA streets more than twenty five-fold.  

The president, who is the commander in chief of the armed forces, wrote on Tuesday to parliament's joint standing committee on defence to advise that he was ordering the deployment of an extra 73,000 members of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) to join the 28,20 soldiers already on the streets.  The soldiers have been deployed in terms of the constitution to support the SA Police Service in enforcing the nationwide lockdown.  In his letter, Ramaphosa wrote that he had decided to employ “an additional 73,180 members of the SANDF, consisting of the regular force, reserve force and auxiliary force.”  He said the deployment would be from 2 April to 26 June 2020.  Ramaphosa added that the revised expenditure to be incurred by the deployment of members of the SANDF amounted to R4.5bn.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Claudi Mailovich at BusinessLive

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