Limited funding for maintenance combined with budget cuts has left the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) with no money to maintain the equipment acquired through the Strategic Defence Procurement (SDP) of the late nineties.
This is according to Defence and Military Veterans Minister, Angie Motshekga, who was answering a written question by Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) National Assembly (NA) public representative Carl Niehaus.
The Strategic Defence Procurement package (aka ‘arms deal’) saw South Africa gain four Meko A200SAN frigates, three Type 209 MOD1400 submarines, 26 Saab Gripen fighter aircraft, 24 BAE Systems Hawk Mk 120 Lead-In Fighter-Trainers and 30 AgustaWestland A109 light utility helicopters.
Motshekga assured Niehaus in a written response “proper financial appreciation and planning” was done ahead of the acquisitions. The upkeep (maintenance) budget was continuously cut leaving the Department of Defence (DoD) unable to contract properly for maintenance and repair of delivered equipment.
“The SA Navy and the SA Air Force were the rightful beneficiaries of the SDPs but the further contracting for maintenance and repair of their equipment became unaffordable as a result of continuous budget cuts.”
“The South African defence industry were also affected by the DoD’s contract declining budget cycles which led to some companies filing for bankruptcy.”
On a slightly more positive note, she told the EFF Member of Parliament that National Treasury “from time to time” released limited funds to maintain the equipment.
On consequence management – which the Niehaus question maintains was lacking (using the phrases “serious mismanagement” and “dereliction of duty”), he was told no-one was guilty of improper financial planning or contracting.
Motshekga’ reply has it neither the DoD nor the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has control of “budget cuts” which were addressed in “every budget vote”.
“We find no need to take consequence measures on our members and officials.”
“We have continuously approached National Treasury for more funding. In some cases National Treasury would release funding for the upkeep of all the SANDF equipment and not only for the SDPs albeit not sufficient.”
She stated that over the previous Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), National Treasury allocated R1.4 billion to the SA Navy and R1 billion to the SA Air Force for the maintenance of prime mission equipment.
“The Defence Department used its limited budget carefully and worked on in-sourcing most of the maintenance and repair processes to its members and the struggling South African defence industry. That is why we are able to train our SANDF and able to get our equipment to some internationally acceptable levels.”
