South Africa has entered the age of unreason. The frequency with which we deploy the defence force to deal with civilian problems raises alarming questions about the ability of the state to govern and safeguard its citizens. Operation Fiela, a deployment of the army in conjunction with the police, is quietly being extended.If we are not careful, the entire country will soon be under the command of the army.President Jacob Zuma and his administration must not be allowed to deploy the army to deal with civilian problems without challenge.Why must the army assist in dealing with the taxi problems in Tshwane? The police and the traffic enforcement agencies are in place there.South Africans should demand answers from Zuma and his team.We cannot have troops not trained in crowd control and other aspects of dealing with civilian matters marching in our streets.Failure to stop this trend will open the door to those who want to curtail our rights and dictate to us how we run our lives.We are yet to be fully informed about the continued deployment of the army in our towns. We are yet to be told why it was necessary to deploy the army in Mamelodi when the chaos there involved only taxi drivers.Were the police and traffic officers unable to deal with the situation?The decision to deploy the army was purportedly a response to the xenophobic violence in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and was supposed to last for only a few months.But today we are told that the operation might be extended until next year.The danger in not questioning the decision to deploy the army at the drop of a hat is that excuses might be advanced to use soldiers to deal with protesters during next year's local government elections.In a country in which the rule of law is supposed to be supreme, it should not be easy to deploy the army to deal with civilian matters...