“Whether on ground, in the air or at sea, the SANDF sits helpless,” is National Council of Provinces (NCOP) member of the Select Committee on Security and Justice (SCSJ) Nicholas Gotsell’s summary of the current state of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF).
He notes in a statement that the Department of Defence (DoD), home to the SANDF, spends over 68% of its R51 billion budget on salaries and wages “yet sits with aged and unskilled personnel”.
According to him the SA Air Force (SAAF) cannot defend South Africa’s skies as only two of 26 Gripens are operational and none of its C-130BZ Hercules are airworthy. (Four Gripens were, however, operational at the September Africa Aerospace and Defence exhibition.) In the wake of last week’s oversight visit to Simons Town “our maritime defence capacity is also shocking”. The SA Navy, he maintains, has one frigate and a lone MMIPV (multi-mission inshore patrol vessel) operational with none of the three Heroine Class Type 209 submarines functional. (Two MMIPVs have been accepted by the Navy, and a third is due for handover this year.)
More appallingly, according to Gotsell, while the SANDF commenced a military review in 2015, the Auditor General (AG) report on the DoD for 2023/24 shows that zero of the Department’s target to evaluate the SA Defence Review 2015 has been achieved, the Gotsell statement, released today (19 November) reads further.
“The President, as early as January 2024, instructed then Minister of Defence, Thandi Modise, and the Department to develop an ‘Interim Force Concept, Revised Military Strategy and Revised Force Design and Force Structure’ for consideration by Cabinet and Parliament. Its recommendation was to double Defence’s budget, from approximately 0.7% of GDP to 1.5%. DoD’s current budget is already has been subject to immense wastage, and we have written to the Minister for clarity on the whether Cabinet has considered this.”
This emerged in a report by the Minister of Defence in response to the DA during an oral question and answer session in the NCOP on the state of the SANDF.
“The report also revealed that South Africa has reached an inflection point, where the Republic must decide on the kind of defence force it wants and can afford. It states that national security choices must be foremost made on domestic concerns.”
Gotsell maintains this cannot happen because of “incessant maladministration” in the DoD. The AG 2023/24 report highlighted what he called “rampant unauthorised expenditure” to the sum of R3.4 billion; irregular expenditure of R338 million and fruitless and wasteful expenditure which drastically increased from R2.569 million in 2022/23 to R51 million in 2023/24. (The irregular expenditure is mainly due to overspending on the compensation of employees budget.)
“The SANDF needs to urgently focus on getting the basics right by cleaning up maleficence and investing in technology as well as the capabilities it desperately needs to fulfil its constitutional mandate,” is his advice to Minister Motshekga and her brains trust at the Defence Ministry, Defence Secretariat and the SANDF.
In closing he has it the allocation of an additional R2.1 billion to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC) is wasteful because the three-nation regional bloc mission cannot fulfil its mandate. SAMIDRC has been in the eastern DRC since December last year and its current mandate is set to expire in mid-December.
