Can SA’s deteriorating military establishment be saved? Defence & military veterans minister Thandi Modise says it can, provided the country learns lessons from the past.
"We need to turn everything upside down and have a relook at how we have done things in the past," Modise says. "We have to see what we can do with the carcasses. What can we sell?"
The reality of SA’s military decline has never been revealed as starkly and painfully as it was last week when parliament’s joint standing committee on defence was briefed on the status quo.
The SA National Defence Force (SANDF) and Denel, as its prime armaments supplier, have reached a point where the government needs to take drastic and immediate steps to halt the decline that military analysts and experts have been warning of for years — apparently in vain.
Years of cutting the fat, then the meat and finally the muscles of what used to be one of the best armed forces in the world and a global arms manufacturer have reduced Denel to a point where it might be liquidated and where the SANDF is struggling to save itself.
Less than 25% of the air force’s fleet of about 209 aircraft are serviceable. The army will have to scrap a plan to replace its 40-year-old Ratel combat vehicles with Badger vehicles (the notorious Project Hoefyster). The army poured more than R7bn into the project without a single vehicle to show for it since the project was announced in 2007.
Hoefyster went off track when the Gupta lieutenants and VR Laser zoomed in on the R16bn contract. State capture and corrupt Denel managers transferred the largest chunk of the manufacturing from one of Denel’s divisions to the now defunct VR Laser.
Solomzi Mbada, CEO of Armscor, the SANDF’s armaments agency, puts it bluntly: "Denel is not in a position to complete the remaining work on phase 1 [of Hoefyster] … Cancel the contract. Call up the bank guarantees held by various banks [of about R1.4bn that the SANDF has paid upfront]."
In such a scenario, the banks would go after Denel, with its possible liquidation to follow. That would mean SA would lose its capability to produce arms. It would also leave the air force without maintenance of its Rooivalk and Oryx helicopters, because Denel is the original equipment manufacturer.
Modise says there are "bits of Hoefyster" that can be sold. "A total restructuring, from maintenance to defence capabilities, will have to be done. Re-armament while depending on the state is not possible. If we put our heads together at least we can save the minimum."
Committee chair Cyril Xaba says the cannibalisation of the defence sector means that SA has been left exposed not only to external threats but also internal ones, as became clear last year with the July riots. The SANDF has also had scrounge for enough serviceable equipment to help Mozambique against insurgents in Cabo Delgado.
All 26 Saab Gripen fighter jets of the air force have been grounded since last year because the service contract with Saab has lapsed due to a lack of money. Only five of the 24 BAE Hawk lead-in fighter trainers are flying.
Scrapping fighter jets in favour of helicopters, which are needed in times of disaster, rapid deployment and search-and-rescue missions, would be a risk. It would take at least 10 years to revive a fighter project should the country need it again.
As it stands, no initial flying training is taking place because of a dispute over the Pilatus PC-7 service contract. Two of the 35 Pilatus aircraft are serviceable and 16 have been placed in storage. Cuba is training SA’s young pilots, while some of the advanced fighter training is done in Russia.
The navy is also in a predicament. If Denel is liquidated, there will be no more ship missiles that are manufactured by Denel Dynamics and regarded as world class.
The core of the crisis is the age of equipment and a lack of funding, worsened by state capture. Modise was direct in her presentation, saying the military does not have unified support in the cabinet as the political divide grows and the slices of the government’s financial cake become smaller.
The question of why no-one in the government, with President Cyril Ramaphosa as commander-in-chief, realised in just how much trouble the defence sector finds itself also remains unanswered.
The issue of the crisis has been raised within the justice, crime prevention and security cluster repeatedly, as well as at national security council and cabinet levels. Yet when KwaZulu-Natal was in flames last year and the insurgency in Mozambique posed a nearby threat, the SANDF, which is also committed to UN peacekeeping operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was stretched to its limit.
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