The SA National Defence Force (SANDF) in its current predicament of too many commitments and too little money and serviceable equipment is fast losing its strategic deterrent value.
It should determine its priorities in conjunction with President Cyril Ramaphosa and the National Treasury to drastically halt the decline. The alternative will not only have negative consequences for it as a national asset to the country, but will affect SA’s stature within the region.
Military analysts responded to Business Day after the dire state of the SANDF in the past week came under fire by the auditor-general, who warned that the SANDF “might not meet its obligations to the Sadc and the maritime borders of the Republic might not be secure, resulting in increased illicit activities on the country’s sea border.”
At the end of the 2023/24 fiscal year, 62% of the SANDF’s commitments were unfunded, but at the same time irregular expenditure had increased from R8.13bn in 2019/20 to a whopping R16.83bn in 2023/24.
With only one of the navy’s four frigates, the SAS Amatola, now partially serviceable, the navy and the air force have seen a marked decline in the number of hours their key assets have been productive.
Navy vessels spent 2,641.47 hours at sea in 2023/24, from a high of 11,081.7 a decade ago, and the air force’s aircraft flew a total of 711.9 hours for force employment in 2023/24 from a high of 11,696.71 in 2012/13.
The navy employs 6,500 people and the air force 8,500. While productivity is at an all-time low, defence still managed to overspend R3.3bn on its salary budget.
“[Certain] movable tangible capital assets could not be located. Not all the assets which belong to the department were accounted for in registers and assets were not always accounted for in line with the accounting standards,” the auditor-general stated in her report to parliament’s standing committee on public accounts.
According to Nicholas Gotsell, DA member on the select committee on security and justice, “the SANDF sits helpless whether on ground, in the air or at sea. The department of defence spends more the 68% of its budget on employees yet sits with aged and unskilled personnel”.
“The SANDF cannot defend our skies, as only two of 26 Gripens [fighter jets] are operational and none of its Hercules C-130s [cargo planes] are airworthy. Our country’s maritime defence capacity is also shocking, as the navy only has one frigate and a patrol vessel to patrol our seas, with none of its submarines functional.”
During a question-and-answer session in the National Council of Provinces on the state of the SANDF, Gotsell said the report revealed that SA had reached an inflection point. The country must decide on the kind of defence force it wanted and could afford.
“It states that national security choices must be foremost made on domestic concerns. This reflection, however, cannot occur due to the department of defence’s incessant maladministration,” Gotsell said.
“The auditor-general’s report highlighted rampant unauthorised expenditure in the department, to the sum of R3.4bn; irregular expenditure which amounted to R338m and fruitless and wasteful expenditure which drastically increased from R2.569m in 2022/23 to R51m in 2023/24.
“The SANDF needs to urgently focus on getting the basics right by cleaning up maleficence and investing in the technology as well as capabilities it desperately needs to fulfil its constitutional mandate,” Gotsell said.
The SANDF’s official response was that “it cannot disclose or comment on internal discussions and outcomes before everything has been concluded”.
A follow-up briefing before the portfolio committee on defence and military veterans on Wednesday on the SANDF’s expenditure at the end of the financial year’s second quarter did provide some details.
During the same briefing, the department stated that the current cost of employment allocation is not sufficient to sustain the personnel component combined with the SANDF’s operational commitments.
It has already overspent on its human resources budget for the new fiscal year on landward defence. This involves the soldiers deployed in the UN and the Sadc missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo; borderline patrols within SA; the protection of national key points such as Eskom installations and assistance to the police with operations against illegal miners.
Minister of defence and military veterans Angie Motshekga told the National Council of Provinces last week that President Cyril Ramaphosa wanted to see the allocation of the national budget to defence increased from its current 0.7% of GDP to 1.5%, but a proper plan was necessary for that.
A draft proposal of the adapted defence review chapters supported by a SWOT analysis was submitted for consultation to the presidency and the minister of finance on October 31.
Helmoed-Römer Heitman, a defence analyst who was closely involved with the compilation of the 2015 review, said that before any proper plan for the future of the SANDF could be negotiated, the government needed to clarify what it expected from the SANDF.
“We still have the core problem that government wants to be a regional player (others want us to do that too) but only funds a border guard capability. So step one must be a clear decision on and statement to the SANDF of the expected level of ambition. Only then can the review team sit down and consider priorities.
“There also needs to be a real effort to cure the SANDF of the view that all that is needed to deal with guerrillas is Land Cruisers and machine guns.
“Times have changed and those forces are far better led, trained, equipped and armed than in the past. Add the rebel forces’ support by other states and in the future by competing major powers, and the nature of threats and risks has changed dramatically.
“Drones are but one of the necessary components of most armed forces nowadays — even the guerrillas have them,” Heitman says.
A former general in the army, who spoke to Business Day anonymously due to his current work commitments, said the SANDF was so busy just trying to comply with all the tasks government continued to pile on its plate that the standard of training and discipline of officers necessarily would decline.
“In Mozambique and in the DRC other countries’ officers see and experience the lack of quality and poor decision-making of our leader corps. Just pushing numbers and bodies into operations does not constitute a proper force when dealing with well-trained and equipped soldiers from other countries.”
The general suggested forming a working committee of experienced officers to work on strategy and get rid of soldiers too old or sickly to serve operationally. It should also take drastic decisions to slim down the SANDF of units and capabilities which can be done without.
“By doing so, there will be more space for young recruits who are fit to serve. Other countries use their retired officers to assist with ad hoc strategic planning such as this. For some reason, the SANDF is hesitant to do the same, while the very same retirees help other African countries as consultants to move their armed forces into the future,” the general said.
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