Military maelstrom

It can be safely assumed that the South African National Defence Force is, as then British Home Secretary John Reid once described his own immigration department:

“Not fit for purpose”.

It is staffed by some of the fattest, most unfit and oldest military servicemen in the world.

It is riddled with Aids, morale and discipline are in tatters while it continues to lose skills and experience due both to affirmative action and, more recently, the disillusionment of black members who, once trained, quickly make their way to the private sector, both here and abroad, and to foreign forces, such as Australia’s.

As RW Johnson has pointed out, many SANDF members are fat and unfit. Their average age is above 40, against levels half that in most decent defence forces. As long ago as 2001 the International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded that the SANDF’s combat ability had fallen below that of even Botswana and Zimbabwe and it doubted if it any longer would be able to repeat its 1998 operation in Lesotho, when it restored the elected administration after a coup.

As it did throughout the civil service, the African National Congress administration purged the SANDF of whites led, for a while, by Patrick “Terror” Lekota, now of COPE but then Defence Minister, who revelled in the shedding of whites, regardless of their world-class skills, experience and institutional memory acquired over decades of service.

It would be most interesting to know the racial make-up, that apartheid relic so beloved of Thabo Mbeki and the affirmative action fanatics, of the pilots of the aircraft which will fly the salute to Jacob Zuma when he is inaugurated. Of course, there are black pilots, all over the world. Tokyo Sexwale is one of them.

But it takes years to train anyone up to the standards required to operate modern fighter jet aircraft and sophisticated helicopters. It can’t be done quickly and while one accepts that apartheid education denied young blacks opportunities to acquire the necessary foundations, it is fruitless to ignore reality by driving out those with the skills.

One often wonders why, exactly, we have a defence force but for the navy to patrol our huge coastline. Of course, the air force is there for the benefit of ANC royalty while the army marches in parades or lolls about in some African pit boozing merrily and eyeing (and sometimes accosting) the local ladies.

The fourth arm, health, is there to care for the Aids-afflicted, at the very least 25% of the total.


Another reason is obvious: to provide spoils for “loyal and disciplined cadres” who are “deployed” to occupy high ranks in the services.

This led, naturally, to the ludicrous situation where we have one general for some 300 odd soldiers whereas in the US the ration is 1:4 000 and in Switzerland, one of the finest forces, it is 1:18 000.

Zuma would be well advised to direct a good deal of his undoubted energy to cleaning up the force, tainted as it is by Mbeki’s corrupt, ruinous and largely unnecessary R60 billion arms deal, which threatened his own political future.

One approach he might investigate would be to expand the size of the force exponentially, recruiting large numbers of young people on one, two and three contracts to be equipped with useful skills and taught discipline in their work and personal lives.

This would surely be preferable to hanging around on street corners, mugging, injuring and killing innocents, using drugs and alcohol, stealing cars and breaking into homes.

As a young man in the US I served in the army in terms of their conscription laws. In my platoon there were several boys from slum areas of big cities who were in the army because a judge had given them a choice between jail and the defence force.

At present our force is useless.

However, as a properly resourced training ground for the youth it could serve a noble purpose and we could pension off all those superfluous, overweight generals.

Another View by Stephen Mulholland