An innovative effort to create skills ranging from food production, including animal husbandry, through to vehicle maintenance and repairs for SA Army Reserve Force personnel is on the way to becoming a production brigade.
This inference comes in a response to a defenceWeb inquiry from the Directorate Corporate Communication (DCC) of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF).
When Project Koba-Tlala, “chasing away hunger” in Setswana, started life seven years ago during Brigadier General Gerhard Kamffer’s tenure as Chief: Army Reserves, it was seen firstly as providing skills to part-time soldiers dependent on call-ups for income. These skills would then be utilised in their home communities providing nutrition, in the form of vegetables grown in community gardens led by part-time soldiers, or services such as vehicle maintenance/repairs.
Kamffer and his team of Reserve Force officers put shoulder to the wheel bringing, among others, the provincial agricultural departments of the Limpopo and North-West provinces aboard, as well as the Potchefstroom campus of the North-West University.
This saw a pilot project to produce vegetables for messes at the SA Army General Support Base in Potchefstroom started. From here Koba-Tlala spread its wings to, among others, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Western Cape with further vegetable garden projects.
In June 2022 a presentation to the then Joint Standing Committee on Defence (JSCD), the one-star outlined his thinking on Koba-Tlala becoming a production brigade to serve and supply the wider national defence force. Part of his presentation had it the envisaged brigade would be a supplier, primarily of fresh produce, to the SANDF as part of an overall self-sustainability drive. At the same time it would contribute to rural development, particularly in areas where there is a defence footprint, such as SA Army Combat Training Centre (CTC) in the Northern Cape.
That Kamffer presentation had it at that time 1 400 plus Reserve Force soldiers had been upskilled in, among others, the basics of food production and animal husbandry; water and sanitation; firefighting; community development and liaison including security as well as basic coding.
A February 2022 CSANDF and Military Command Council (MCC) decision has it “Project Koba-Tlala is approved in its current configuration for the short-term FY22/23 whilst a plan is drafted to transform it into a Production Brigade which will serve to support sustainment of the SANDF in the outer years of the current MTEF (medium term expenditure framework) from FY2024/2025”.
The current state of play, as per the DCC, is that an integrated project team (IPT) with representation from the Department of Defence (DoD) Logistics and Human Resources divisions as well as “key members of Project Koba-Tlala” is planning development of agri-related capabilities on under-utilised DoD land “as well as the pursuit of manufacturing capabilities”.
The planning saw an SANDF team in Zambia on a week-long benchmarking visit earlier this year with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) neighbour’s National Service Production Brigade (ZNSPB). The service, part of the Zambian Defence Force (ZDF), has its origins in the Land Army started in 1963. Apart from preparing Zambians to “dutifully serve and protect” their country, it provides agricultural and craft skills to promote self-sufficiency and national prosperity.
The production brigade, the DCC response has it, is in a development phase and remains an element of the Logistics Division of the SANDF under Kamffer, the appointed IPT leader.
