Less than a month after the landward component of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) was declared combat ready, a different picture emerged from a Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Defence (JSCD) meeting.
The combat readiness tag was bestowed on Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha’s SA Army on conclusion of Exercise Vuk’uhlome 2025 at its Northern Cape Combat Training Centre (CTC).
In a statement issued post the oversight committee meeting on 5 December, Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentarian Chris Hattingh said, among others, “a bare bones, three slide” briefing by Joint Operations Chief, Lieutenant General Siphiwe Sangweni on the upcoming Operation Mistral rotation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) did not pass muster.
Deputy Defence Minister Bantu Holomisa also voiced frustrations at the slim presentation at last Friday’s meeting, saying he only received the presentation that morning, stating – “this is unacceptable.”
“I’m going to talk to the Minister and the President and the Commander of the SANDF to say when they appointed me, they said I’ve got a little bit of experience in the Defence Force, but if they are going to sideline me, it’s not going to work,” Holomisa said.
The DRC deployment, at a quarter of a century, is the longest yet in the history of the SANDF and its predecessor, the SA Defence Force (SADF).
Bemoaning the lack of usable information supplied by Sangweni, Hattingh noted “committee members were denied crucial details on troop readiness, logistical support and medical preparedness”. This, according to him, presented similarly to the “disastrous” Southern African Development Community (SADC) mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC) where poor planning and inadequate support compromised the safety of South African soldiers. SAMIDRC had its mandate terminated in March ahead of a scheduled December 2025 finish following the fall of Goma in January. SANDF members remain deployed with the UN mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) under Operation Mistral.
Hattingh flatly turned down a suggestion that the rotation presentation be revisited in January saying confirmation of the troop movement would “soon” be coming by way of a letter to Parliament from SANDF Commander-in-Chief, President Cyril Ramaphosa. The JSCD, Hattingh told DefenceWeb today, is now set for an “extraordinary” visit to the Department of Defence (DoD) Mobilisation Centre at De Brug on Monday (15 December). “I haven’t received confirmation yet, but was informed the visit will comprise a briefing as well as a walk around, with questions allowed”.
His objections to the rotation going ahead are based on information in internal DoD reports indicating just 27% of SANDF personnel are “healthy enough to deploy” with the health status of a further 36% of soldiers on personnel registers not known. City Press/Rapport over the weekend quoted these figures coming from SA Military Health Service statistics.
“Commanders,” Hattingh said, “failed to enforce mandatory health assessments, young recruits are too few to bolster readiness and budget constraints mean the SANDF cannot fully fund its 70 000 strong force”.
Looking back on a year during which the SANDF was regularly under fire in Parliament Hattingh has it the problem goes beyond any one deployment – “it is systemic”.
Solution-wise all he can offer at present is another defence review with implementation of the 2015 Defence Review proceeding in full at the same time. That document, the second of its type since establishment of the SANDF in 1994, calls, among others, for sustained and layered military health support, assessing personnel health, logistical capabilities, training and funding.
This, Hattingh has it, is a step in the right direction from South Africa continuing to gamble with the lives of its young men and women in uniform while the military is in a state of decline.
Hattingh is not the only politician to blast the SANDF for its presentation to the JSCD on 5 December. Carl Niehaus, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Permanent Representative on the Joint Standing Committee on Defence and the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans, said he was outraged by the SANDF’s briefing.
“What should have been a serious, constitutionally mandated oversight engagement ahead of the next rotation of South African troops under Operation Mistral — the SANDF’s contribution to the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) — was reduced to an insult of historic proportions,” he said.
He said Sangweni’s presentation “contained less usable information than a tourist brochure. No troop numbers beyond vague ‘reductions’, no equipment lists, no force-protection assurances, no lessons learned, no financial breakdown, no mission objectives — nothing that would allow members to fulfil their constitutional duty to assess operational readiness. Six slides. A six-slide middle finger to Parliament.”
Niehaus said such “contempt” by the Department of Defence/SANDF led to the death of 14 South African soldiers in the DRC in January because the SAMIDRC mission was chronically under-resourced, under-equipped, and poorly prepared. “Eleven months later, with that inquiry still incomplete and its recommendations apparently ignored, the SANDF expects Parliament to wave through another rotation on the strength of six meaningless slides. The blood of those fallen soldiers demands better.”
Niehaus added the ‘insult’ was compounded by the absence of Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Angie Motshekga at Friday’s meeting, who he accused of treating Parliament with disdain.
