In late March, veteran defence correspondent Erika Gibson wrote about the parlous conditions facing South Africa’s soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Deployed to the war-torn east of the country as part of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) mission in the DRC (SAMIDRC), they’re there to neutralise the M23 rebel group. The group is a formidable force — and not just because it’s familiar with the terrain. The UN has documented how the Rwandan army supports the M23 with troops and military equipment, including surface-to-air missiles (Rwanda denies providing anything other than political support). More recently, a UN panel of experts also implicated Uganda in providing clandestine backing to the M23. So it’s no rag-tag group of rebels then.
Only, South Africa’s forces were dumped in the field without kitchens, doctors or nurses. About 600 soldiers had to share six pit latrines. The secure container to house the contingent’s cash reserves hadn’t arrived, so there was limited money for supplies; some food suppliers were refusing to deliver, given payment delays. There was no cargo plane to ferry equipment to the troops; only a portion of the weapons systems had been deployed, there was no proper heavy artillery and no air support to speak of.
The Sake logistics support base, now home to most of the South African continent in the DRC, was under constant fire, and had to “defend itself with the help of cooks, clerks and signallers”, Gibson wrote.
Three months on, things wouldn’t seem to be all that different. The security situation at Sake remains critical and facilities minimal, Gibson reported in City Press at the weekend. This after a mortar attack on the base last week — the fourth deadly incident in five months — killed two soldiers, bringing the total lives lost in the SAMIDRC contingent to about 12, according to Gibson. One of the soldiers apparently died waiting for an ambulance as there’s no air support — operationally or for evacuating the wounded. Twenty soldiers were injured, the commander of the South African contingent among them; he was hit in the chest by shrapnel while in his office caravan.
As Gibson tells it, the families of the soldiers have expressed their alarm. One mother told her: “They don’t even have showers or toilets, and the tents in which the soldiers are packed like sardines at the base had to be bought by them at great expense. The food’s poor and their only chance to buy something warm to eat at a store is when they have to go to the airport to help with arrangements to send their dead comrades back to South Africa, or to fetch equipment.”
[They] were dumped in the field without kitchens, doctors or nurses ... there was no proper heavy artillery and no air support to speak of
It gets worse. Gibson reported early last month that there was still no basic field hospital because medical equipment and industrial generators — also to be used for power more generally — had not yet been flown to the DRC. And soldiers are given a limited number of ammunition magazines, which are then depleted in full-scale skirmishes.
This for a R2.37bn mission.
For all that, you’d expect a particularly compelling reason for our soldiers being in the DRC in the first place. But you don’t seem to find much support for the mission beyond references to the Sadc mutual defence pact, according to which the regional organisation should assist any member facing external military aggression. It’s a 16-member bloc, but there’s precious little direct support for military action from other countries (only Tanzania and Malawi have contributed troops, and then far fewer than South Africa). So one can’t help but wonder if this isn’t just a deadly exercise in vanity.
Particularly when you consider the financial constraints. Based on boots on the ground, the defence force is underfunded by something like R2.6bn, warned then defence minister Thandi Modise in a parliamentary reply last year. And that’s before you factor in the ageing equipment and stretched human resources. It was “becoming progressively more unsustainable”, Modise said, adding: “We have now reached the point where the republic must decide on the kind of defence force it wants and can afford.”
It must cut its coat, in other words, according to its cloth.
And throwing money at the problem won’t solve anything either — not if procurement corruption, supply chain mismanagement and incompetence continue to bedevil the force. This was widely reported in relation to the disastrous Battle of Bangui — in which 13 South African servicemen died in the Central African Republic — and in subsequent scandals, including, most recently, involving former defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
If all this sounds depressingly familiar, it’s because it is. In Bangui, troops were left without adequate transport, they didn’t have a medical field hospital, there was no air support, no heavy artillery. They were stationed at a base that was poorly defended, leaving them vulnerable to deadly attacks.
These were all issues the military vowed to rectify after the 2013 disaster. Current conditions would suggest that ongoing resource constraints and a lack of political will mean the situation is little changed.
If, as the former defence minister pointed out, the military is woefully underfunded for its operational needs, isn’t dispatching a poorly equipped force to do battle with a formidable rebel army in the eastern DRC tantamount to once again sending our soldiers to die?
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