The troops have been deployed on the streets of South Africa's largest city almost a month after the president announced the military would work together with police to tackle high levels of crime.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his annual state of the nation The address on 12 February said that organized crime was “the most immediate threat” to South Africa's democracy and economic development.
On Wednesday, soldiers took to the streets of Eldorado Park, a working-class suburb in Johannesburg, the country's financial capital, which has high levels of crime and gang violence.
Local media published photographs of armored vehicles arriving in the area and Independent Online reported that local councilor Juwairiya Kaldin welcomed their arrival.
Soldiers were also seen in the Johannesburg suburb of Riverslee. Media reports say that soldiers are conducting door-to-door searches.
The Department of Defence, which oversees the South African National Police Service and military, did not immediately provide details on the deployment. But the president said last month that the military would assist the police service in fighting gang violence and illegal mining.
South African soldiers search a building during a patrol operation in Riverslee, near Johannesburg (AFP)
Ramaphosa said in a notice to the Speaker of Parliament that the initial deployment would include 550 soldiers in Gauteng province, which also includes Johannesburg, to help tackle crime and maintain law and order.
He said that this deployment will last till the end of April.
The government is planning widespread deployment in five of its nine provinces, according to details presented to Parliament by the police.
The deployment will focus on illegal mining in Gauteng, North West and Free State provinces and gang violence in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces.
Police officials said some parts of the national deployment could last more than a year.
South Africa has a very high rate of violent crime. Police reported 6,351 murders from October to December 2025, about 70 murders a day in the country of about 63 million people.
However, not all residents of crime-affected communities are happy with the plan to deploy the military.
In the Cape Flats, a poor area of the Western Cape with high levels of gang violence, where troops are also likely to be deployed, people told Al Jazeera It said last month that the military would not help fix the root causes of violence or social ills that make it easier to recruit people into gangs.
“Bringing in the military is a very dangerous thing because there is impatience with the fact that the police are not doing their job,” Irwin Kinnes, associate professor at the University of Cape Town's Center for Criminology, told Al Jazeera at the time. He described the move as “political”.
“This is to show that political leaders have listened to the public. But the call for the army has not come from the community. It has come from the politicians,” he said.