If you’re looking for a bleak tale of the true state of our air force — the second-oldest after the Royal Air Force — consider the debacle that played out recently at the Lohathla army base that covers 158,000ha in the Kalahari in the Northern Cape.
It began with a veld fire at around 10am on October 7, in the nearby iron-ore mining town of Kathu. Thanks to high winds in the area, which typically whip up to around 70km/h, the blaze spread quickly and reached the combat training area by about 2pm. At that point the fire jumped the base’s perimeter fences, destroying equipment and vehicles worth millions of rand, killing six soldiers and resulting in severe burns for three others.
Despite the base having a Forward Air Command Post no aircraft was available to airlift the injured to hospital. Instead, they had to wait for an ambulance to pick its way through the veld.
Adding insult to injury, defence minister Thandi Modise was unable to get an aerial view when visiting the base after the fire since no helicopter was available. In the end, an Oryx utility helicopter had to be flown from its base at Ysterplaat in Cape Town, to Pretoria, and then on to Lohathla, about 200km northwest of Kimberley.
So, to get Modise into the air, the Oryx required a 2,000km journey across the country. And that helicopter was the only serviceable Oryx available in the entire air force fleet, with the only available aircrew whose training on the aircraft was up to date.
That may read like an episode of Fawlty Towers, but it’s a grim illustration of the surprisingly rapid deterioration of South Africa’s air force, which received an estimated R9bn, in today’s terms, as part the notorious 1999 arms deal.
Far from being able to sweep the saga under the carpet, Modise was forced to respond to questions in parliament on the state of the air force, lodged by the DA’s Kobus Marais, shortly after her return from Lohathla.
Modise revealed that of the government’s original 39 Oryx helicopters — the air force’s supposed workhorse — just five were serviceable. Most of those are deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo where South African troops are part of a UN peacekeeping force, and in Mozambique, where South African special forces and soldiers are working with local soldiers as part of a Sadc military mission against Islamist insurgents.
More alarmingly, just 30 of the military’s inventory of 195 aircraft are working — an 85% failure rate. But that’s probably just as well because most of the aircrews’ qualifications to operate a variety of aircraft have either expired or are about to because they haven’t been able to log the flying hours required.
So even if all the aircraft were working there aren’t the crews to fly them. For many of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) personnel that’s a source of deep frustration.
Cost cuts
On the day of the memorial at Lohathla, a private aircraft had to be chartered to take a group of journalists and senior officials to the base. Modise herself arrived on a commercial flight that landed at Sishen, about 33km away.
When the FM spoke to soldiers who had battled the flames engulfing their camp a few days earlier, the emotions were evident.
“We had to douse the flames of our dying colleagues’ bodies with bottles of water,” one soldier said. “If only there were a few helicopters to waterbomb the fire ... maybe we could have saved them. Some of them were trying to outrun the fire. One was trying to get a Casspir [armoured personnel carrier] started, but there were only two batteries between 14 Casspirs and he was overcome by flames before he could fit the battery.”
The Lohathla debacle has laid bare what has been known to the men and women serving in the SANDF for some time: the once mighty South African Air Force, formed in 1920 and which provided invaluable support in Europe in World War 2 and the Korean War in the 1950s, is but a shadow of its former self.
Modise conceded to Marais that the lack of aircraft had compromised South Africa’s defence readiness, but she attributed much of it to a shortage of cash.
“The challenge is the severe unavailability of funds to place [service] contracts [for repairs] and it is not as a result of nonperformance by Armscor [the procurement agency for the defence force] or the air force. Armscor had to engage with contractors within limited available funds and in numerous instances this has not yielded positive results,” Modise said.
The result is a glut of grounded aircraft. Most of the jet fighters — consisting of Gripen and Hawks — are parked in hangars. So is the 82-year-old Dakota transport fleet and the only maritime patrol aircraft on inventory. There are no service contracts in place for the Dakotas (which will probably be retired permanently), the four King Air and eight Cessna Caravan 208 light aircraft.
Of the 35 Pilatus Astra aircraft used to train pilots, just six are serviceable and the service contract’s specifications were unacceptable to Pilatus, the Swiss manufacturer. Inkwazi, the Boeing business and presidential jet, and one Falcon 50 executive jet are flying, while another two of the VIP squadron’s jets are undergoing repairs.
Two of the 60-year-old Hercules C-130 transport aircraft — the only aircraft available for logistics support and transporting troops — are in the UK at Marshall Air for major upgrades. One is expected to arrive back in SA this month.
New light on the arms deal
The debacle also casts new light on the nefarious arms deal, concluded at the turn of the century at an estimated cost (in today’s terms) of R142bn.
Aircraft were a large part of the military package and questions persist whether South Africa even needed the expensive Gripen aircraft purchased from BAE Systems and SAAB in the first place.
As Paul Holden, arms expert and director of Shadow World Investigations, wrote in 2020, “the costs have been so high that the air force confirmed in 2016 that only half the Gripen fighter jets are in active use, while half are kept in ‘rotational storage’, slashing the number of flying hours that are being logged.”
Holden calculates that the three loans taken with Barclays Bank to cover the purchase of the Gripen and Hawks would have cost more than R9bn, based on contemporary numbers.
That’s an awful lot of money to spend on aircraft that spend awfully little time in the air.
“Perhaps the most concerning figure is that 165 aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spares or budget constraints to conduct necessary repairs,” says the DA’s Marais. “It means that, in the unfortunate event of a national security crisis, at least half of our air force cannot be deployed to protect our country.”
Though South Africa isn’t on the verge of going to war, in the event of natural disasters — and those may well be on the rise thanks to climate change — or civil unrest (think of July 2021) the air force is now conspicuously ill-equipped to assist.
The question is, can this be fixed? Some analysts aren’t sure. They say unless there’s a U-turn in the defence budget approved by the government and the National Treasury, the air force may have reached a point of no return.
By some estimates, it would take R4bn-R5bn just to get the air force to a state of basic readiness. But with the Treasury’s austerity measures being enforced, the chances of allocating such an amount to the defence force seem remote at best.
Marais blames the government’s mismanagement, a lack of political will and neglect for the demise of the defence force’s combat capabilities. Culpability aside, the bottom line is the country’s national security is considerably weaker. And the politicians are ignoring the red warning light on the fuel tank.
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