Chapter 3

Fighting Back:

The State's Operational Response

Introduction

It was the much-published death of Rashaad Staggie on 4 August 1996 that brought the existence of urban terrorism in the Western Cape to the attention of South Africa and the world. Since that incident, various other incidents of urban terrorism have occurred, many of them involving the organisation known as ‘People Against Gangsterism and Drugs’ (Pagad), as well as a number of gangs. In many of these incidents, the South African security forces were called in to respond, or were themselves directly targeted.

The acts of urban terrorism since the Staggie incident include petrol bomb attacks, pipe bomb attacks, drive-by shootings and bomb explosions aimed at gangs, and later aimed at both the security forces and the public at large, as in the cases of the Planet Hollywood and Camps Bay explosions.

After August 1996, these acts of terror had taken on such large proportions that they could no longer be dealt with by normal police action. At the beginning of 1996, the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) jointly responded through the National Operational Co-ordinating Mechanism (NOCOC) to execute special counter-terrorism operations.1

This chapter will detail the actions taken by the security forces in response to urban terrorism in the Western Cape during an almost four-year period from October 1997 to July 2000. This chapter will also discuss the common-sense strategy adopted by the security forces to prevent urban terrorism.

The security forces’ response

The response of the security forces (SAPS/SANDF) can best be discussed against the background of a timeline indicating acts of urban terrorism and the security force action taken to counter them. The timeline clearly shows four distinct operations launched by the security forces, including, inter alia, Operations Recoil, Saladin, Good Hope and Crackdown (Figure 3). The statistics of Operation Crackdown (1 April 2000) reflect the change in strategy that was initiated during Operation Good Hope, to act against the increasing tendency of crime such as urban terrorism.

Operation Recoil

On 16 October 1997, a meeting took place between president Mandela and several cabinet ministers, as well as the national commissioner of the SAPS and the chief of the SANDF. The meeting focused its attention on the security and crime situation in the Western Cape, specifically the Cape Flats. The National Operational Co-ordinating Committee (NOCOC) and the Provincial Operational Co-ordinating Committee (POCOC) of the Western Cape subsequently held a planning session on 17 October 1997, to give effect to the directions emanating from the presidential meeting.

Operation Recoil was launched on 23 October 1997, to counter growing insecurity among the people of the Western Cape, who were also influenced by media-driven speculation about a war of gangs against Pagad. Pagad attacks for the period January to August 1997 accounted for 111 incidents, whereas gang-on-gang violence accounted for 75. Prior to the launch of Operation Recoil, the POCOC (Western Cape) had sought to integrate a number of measures into a co-ordinated operation. These measures included the efforts of normal visible policing, the intelligence process, and high-density deployment, in addition to specific investigations focused on both Pagad and gang-related criminality. The POCOC-driven effort had managed to contain both gang-on-gang violence and Pagad-related violence, to a statistical average of 7.3 and 9.9 attacks per month respectively, for the period January to July 1997.

Operational concept

The operational concept that was decided upon during the joint NOCOC/POCOC Western Cape2 planning meeting included the following: an intelligence-driven factor; a high-density crime prevention factor; investigating task groups, and co-ordination and visible force levels.

Intelligence-driven factor of Operation Recoil

The operation was intelligence-driven, and comprised the following intelligence focus areas:

crime patterns to determine ‘hot spots’ for high-density3 and crime-prevention4 operations;



tactical intelligence for the purpose of high-density and crime-prevention operations;



intelligence for the purpose of court-directed investigations; and



intelligence provided by specialised investigation units that could be utilised for any of the above purposes.

High-density crime prevention factor of Operation Recoil

The high-density crime prevention and visibility operations were conducted by:

a crime prevention task team (crime prevention and visibility);

a visible gang unit (crime prevention);

public order policing (high-density operations); and

the South African army (high-density operations).

Investigating task groups of Operation Recoil

The investigations of the operation were conducted by:

a gang investigation task group (concentrating on inter-gang conflict);



a Pagad investigation task group (concentrating on Pagad activities); and



specialised investigation units (concentrating on areas emanating from gang activities, conflict between Pagad, gangs, and so on).

Co-ordination and visible force levels of Operational Recoil

The co-ordination of Operation Recoil was handled in the following way:

co-ordination of the operation was conducted through the NOCOC (national level) and POCOC (provincial level);



intelligence co-ordination was implemented by a Provincial Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee (PICOC) to co-ordinate with the POCOC structure; and



members from NOCOC visited the POCOC for joint planning and evaluation sessions on a regular basis.

In addition, NOCOC provided the national commissioner of the SAPS and the chief of the SANDF with feedback on a weekly basis. The national commissioners of the SAPS and the SANDF would then provide feedback to the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS) ministers’ committee, during monthly meetings or as required.

The visible force levels required by the launching of Operation Recoil led to an integrated operational capacity that was expanded to include more than 1 000 members of:

the South African National Defence Force;

public order police;

Pagad visible task team members;

visible gang unit members;

gang investigation unit members; and

Pagad involvement team members.

The successes of Operation Recoil — visible high-density operations

The concept of Operation Recoil was built on the principle of flooding flashpoint areas with high-density security force deployment by way of mobile visible patrols as well as cordon and search operations, in order to flush out criminals at such flashpoint areas. This strategy also improved the SAPS’s ability to synchronise and focus high-density deployment in flashpoint areas, as determined by weekly crime pattern analyses submitted by crime information managers at SAPS station and area levels, as well as strategic crime tendency analyses conducted by the intelligence co-ordinating structures. Daily crime information reports also guided operational planning on a day-to-day basis, between weekly POCOC meetings.

From 23 October 1997 to 22 January 1998, the visible high-density contingent of Operation Recoil netted a total of 7 437 arrests, inclusive of certain serious crime categories (Table 3).

During these operations numerous successes were achieved.

The effect of Operation Good Hope since it started in January 1999 can be seen in Figure 6. There is a remarkable decline in acts of urban terrorism, as well as gang-related incidents, comparing 1998 with 1999, and with 2000, and also during 1999, after the start of Operation Good Hope. There was, however, again in 2000, an increase in specifically gang-related violence. In 2000, there were 437 incidents of gang violence in which 160 people were arrested. Pagad-related incidents were the lowest during 2000, with 22 incidents and 15 arrests. It is thus clear that the state’s response to curb urban terrorism was successful.

The biggest problems experienced during the start of Operation Good Hope were the co-ordination of tactical intelligence between the role players, as well as those of the investigation units. Although the strategic concept behind the operation depended on intelligence-driven operations, the initial drive for Operation Good Hope was based on intelligence generated by the operational personnel. As the operation proceeded, the intelligence flow also improved, resulting in positive arrests in connection with urban terrorism and gang-related crime.

The integrated approach used by the security forces from a preventive viewpoint was, and still is, very successful. As successful investigations increased and more arrests were made (of gangs and members of Pagad involved in urban terrorism), incidents of urban terrorism declined drastically, to almost none.

The security forces have learned from the operations executed in the Western Cape since 1997, and have since adopted these concepts in operations where the need is to stabilise areas ridden by high crime — such as taxi violence, bank robberies, cash-in-transit heists, and so on.

Operation Crackdown

In his speech at the opening of parliament on 25 June 1999, President Mbeki stated that "multi-disciplinary" interventions would be introduced in areas of high crime concentrations, including all crimes of violence.

All POCOCs were thereby tasked to execute integrated high-density, intelligence-driven operations in the identified crime-combating zones, from April 2000 to April 2001, in an operation known as Operation Crackdown.

Operational concept

The concept comprised two main strategies. These were the serious and violent crime stabilisation or geographical approach, and the organised-crime strategy, both of which would be supported by multi-disciplinary interventions in the cases of high crime areas.

Serious and violent crime/geographical approach: a geographical approach was followed, concentrating on the geographical ‘hot spots’, clustered into crime combating zones.



Organised crime approach: a process was implemented to identify syndicates having the highest impact on organised crime. To neutralise such syndicates, organised crime project teams were established.



Multi-disciplinary interventions: this approach ensured that the social sector concentrated its socio-economic development and social crime prevention efforts in the same areas as the security forces. Such an integrated approach was planned to lead to the implementation of "multi-disciplinary interventions in areas of high crime concentration".

This operation then, inter alia, also concentrated on urban terrorism and gang violence in the Western Cape, viewing them as acts of violent crime.

The eastern and western metropolitan areas of the Western Cape were identified as two separate ‘crime-combating zones’. For command and control purposes, however, and to address all the crime tendencies in the two police areas, the operation was co-ordinated from one centralised Joint Operational Centre.

The Crime Combating Task Group comprised:

the stability component (public order police, crime prevention, air wing, special task force);



the intelligence component (crime intelligence with the support of other intelligence agencies);



the investigation component (detective services in co-operation with other agencies such as the Scorpions, SARS, and so on);



the crime prevention component (crime prevention in partnership with other stakeholders);



the communication component (SAPS Communication Services in cooperation with other role players); and



the legal component (SAPS Legal Officers).

The operators responsible for Task Group components included intelligence, investigations, stability, reaction, crime-prevention communication, normal policing, monitoring and evaluation. The entire operation was co-ordinated by the National Operational Co-ordinating Mechanism.

Successes of Operation Crackdown

During the first three months of Operation Crackdown, from 1 April 2000 to 23 July 2000, noticeable successes were achieved in the eastern and western metropolitan areas of the Western Cape (Table 6).

The Task Team had to concentrate on taxi and bus violence in the Western Cape, during March and April 2000. Changing the mission from concentrating on gangs and Pagad violence, to taxi and bus violence, was easy. This is one of the advantages the Crime Combating Task Team has in addressing and stabilising any type of violent crime with terrorism-type modus operandi.

A common sense strategy to prevent urban terrorism

On 4 March 1998, cabinet approved the official policy on terrorism and the management of incidents of terrorism.

The policy defines terrorism as follows: "The incident or incidents of violence and the threat thereof against a person, a group of persons or property, not necessarily related to the aim of the incident to coerce a government or civil population or a segment thereof to act or not to act according to certain principles." Incidents of terrorism are by this definition visible in bombings, hi-jacking of aircraft/ships, kidnapping, hostage situations, sabotage, assassinations and indiscriminate shooting of citizens.

As examined in the sequence of events in this chapter, the security forces had experienced urban terrorism in the Western Cape, and were therefore in a position whereby they could implement and fine-tune these strategies and to conceptualise and implement effective anti-terrorism actions.

The planning of anti-terrorism actions can be executed in two phases, these being:

pre acts-of-terrorism reduction; and

post acts-of-terrorism recovery.

Reduction: Pre acts-of-terrorism phase

The pre acts-of-terrorism phase includes mitigation, prevention and pre-preparedness.

The most important element of the pre acts-of-terrorism phase is prevention. Prevention can be obtained if intelligence is available. Intelligence is the most important tool in the prevention of acts of terrorism. Prevention is ‘targeted’ if intelligence has identified the time and place of the planned attack. The steps of targeted prevention are straightforward: isolate the target from the terrorists (or the terrorists from the target), or sabotage their plans. Then arrest the terrorists as soon as all the possibilities of determining their plans, associates and supplies have been exploited. The crucial ingredient is always intelligence.

The element of mitigation is to ensure a lessening of resources: the terrorists must be denied resources and information — for training, weapons and explosives. This can be done by executing high-density and targeted operations aimed at weapon caches. Terrorists must also be denied the support they need, such as safe houses, money, materials, and so on.

Finally, in order to be prepared, personnel must be trained and willing to use immense investigative resources to investigate any terrorist events targeting South Africans. It is also vital to link prosecutions with investigations, to ensure a high number of successful prosecutions.

Recovery: Post acts-of-terrorism phase

The post acts-of-terrorism phase includes contingency planning for assassinations, shooting incidents, bomb explosions, hostage situations, sabotage and kidnapping. ‘Pre acts-of-terrorism’ refers to those actions executed to prevent terrorism, to mitigate it and to prepare for acts of terrorism. ‘Post acts-of-terrorism’ refers to those actions executed after acts of terrorism have occurred.

A strategy for anti-terrorism acts can visually be explained as follows (Figure 7).

The strategy currently used in South Africa has been operationalised in an anti-terrorism operational concept based on co-ordination and co-operation between the following entities: intelligence, operations, investigations, protection and communication.

The operational concept is co-ordinated within the Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (Figure 8).

NOCOC is a mechanism set up to be utilised for joint intelligence co-ordination on national and provincial level. It is known as the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee (at the national level) and as the Provincial Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee (at the provincial level).



Western Cape. This refers to the area in which the operation was executed. The area is the eastern and western metropole of Cape Town.



’High-density’ refers to an operation where an area is flooded by SAPS/SANDF members executing patrols, roadblocks, and cordon and search operations.



’Crime-prevention’ refers to action executed to prevent crime by means of patrols, roadblocks, and cordon and search operations.