The Minister of Police with the backing of the President has agreed to deploy the SANDF to the townships to deal with the violence that has risen from the drug trade in Cape Town. There are so many challenges with this solution and the silence of the public in challenging this is worrying.

Charity Monareng who is the Parliamentary and Policy Research Officer at TB HIV Care and is actively engaged on high level advocacy work for drug policy reform in South Africa. She is also currently doing her PhD at the University of Cape Town in Public Law with the focus on developing South Africa’s drug narrative and exploring the discourses in the response to drugs in South Africa and how these have influenced the failed response to drugs. Her research areas include drugs and gangs and her Master’s research focused on youth involvement in gangs in Lavender Hill, Cape Town and Westbury, Johannesburg.

Shaun Shelly is the Human Rights and Policy lead at TB/HIV Care, where he founded SA Drug Policy Week. He holds a post as a researcher at the University of Pretoria, Department of Family Medicine, and is the former Deputy Secretary of the United Nations VNGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs. He is the chairperson of SANPUD, on the management advisory committee for the International Drug Policy Consortium and sits on a number of boards and advisory groups, locally and internationally.

Charity and Shaun joined Benito Vergotine in studio on Thursday 18 July.

Listen to the conversation here: Is the army the answer to Cape Flats violence?