Militaries across the world like their secrets; Kobus Marais likes to expose those secrets when he believes it is in the public interest to do so.
Marais, a DA MP, spoke out about the irregular purchase by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) of a Cuban-made Covid drug when the deal was exposed. More recently he helped alert the nation to the arrival of a shadowy Russian ship, the Lady R, in the dead of night at the Simon’s Town naval base. The ship, one of many Russian vessels sanctioned by the US government after the invasion of Ukraine, came and went without a word of what it was offloading — or perhaps loading. More than a month later, the government still has not given an explanation.
Marais, the DA’s shadow minister of defence and military veterans, says the secrecy and the government’s “lame excuses” about the ship prove its support for Russia despite global condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine. “Our government’s dogged support of Russia and Cuba is totally contradictory to our country’s most important trade and foreign diplomatic relations with Western countries,” he tells the FM.
That’s why his voice was one of the loudest against the SANDF paying R33m for the Cuban Covid drug of a total order of R341m, despite its medical service warning that the drug was not registered with the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority. The SANDF, on the insistence of the auditor-general (AG), had to return all the drugs to Cuba, with the R33m indicated as fruitless expenditure on the AG’s report. The Cubans still want their payment for the full order.
Marais took over as the party’s defence spokesperson from David Maynier in 2015 and has become an early warning system on military irregularities. He grew up in Robertson, did two years’ national service and in 1995 became a councillor in nearby Rawsonville and eventually its mayor. He later settled in Worcester to be close to the De la Bat School for the Deaf, which his daughter attended.
In parliament he serves on the portfolio and the joint standing committees on defence, having to deal with the defence force, the armaments industry, the ever-shrinking defence budget, new legislation, and operational issues in a complex portfolio. If he had his way, he would like both committees to expand their roles on oversight while working with the department of defence and the SANDF towards a better dispensation for soldiers.
We can work together on many levels as the opposition and government as long as we have the same goals
— Kobus Marais
“The roles and strategies of the defence department, the rightsizing of the SANDF and the reprioritisation of resources are all crucial to bringing about a defence force more suited for the needs of the future in a sustainable manner,” he says.
He urges more active participation by the committees and a regard for their decision-making within Armscor, Denel and the defence industry. This is needed, he says, to ensure a smaller SANDF with proper prime-mission equipment.
“The SANDF lags far behind some African and other developing countries’ utilisation of the latest technology like cyber, drones, satellites and others as force multipliers on the battlefield. Some of our potential enemies not only have access to the best military technology available, but [experience] in its operational use.”
Marais supports the amalgamation of Armscor and Denel to minimise the duplication of roles. He favours the privatisation of some Denel divisions such as Denel Dynamics, Denel Aeronautics and Denel Vehicle Systems so that the industry can become the money-spinner it once was.
“We can work together on many levels as the opposition and government as long as we have the same goals. One of the most positive examples of this was during the KwaZulu-Natal unrest of 2021 when I interacted daily with the minister and the secretary of defence as well as the general staff on the ground dealing with the crisis.
“It was incredible to experience how fast everybody could act on hot intelligence to calm down the situation. There was constructive and very good co-operation between the ANC government, including the president, the DA’s leadership, myself and the defence officials and even the minister of finance to make additional funding available for the SANDF.”
However, the inevitable downsizing of the SANDF from 73,000 to 55,000 soldiers, the reduction of the budget spent on personnel from 70% to 55% and the increase of the defence budget from 0.8% to at least 1.25% of GDP over the medium term are the biggest challenges that the government, the department of defence, the defence committees and the voters will have to agree on, he says. The alternative will be an even further decline of the SANDF.
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