Dressed to kill, but the uniforms need work

As 2,000 sets of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) uniforms (and 3,000 pairs of boots) head off to the Democratic Republic of Congo for real-world battlefield testing, spare a thought for those soldiers of old who fought and died in their own rough clothes.

Economics, then as now, was a major factor. Money was spent on weapons and, occasionally, food. Anyway, why clothe troops when the survivors would just go home when the fighting was over?

Now we are roughly 400 years into the evolution of the military uniform, which began appearing around the time rulers, kings, and other despots began raising permanent national armies.

There were episodes of sartorial and tactical insanity: British redcoats, with white bandoliers forming a juicy marksman’s cross over the sternum; Greece’s Presidential Guard, pompons on their toecaps and pleated white skirts; the Swiss Guards at the Vatican whose get-up screams “gelato seller” rather than “Defender of the Pope”; North Africa’s Zouaves who, in their baggy red pantaloons, once bled for France in all its wars …

These days there is camouflage, ripstop cotton, jungle boots, Kevlar helmets, sunhats and military-grade underpants. Amid this cornucopia is the SANDF’s current camouflage battledress, which has been found wanting and lacking durability in the places where South Africa’s troops have recently deployed.

Plans for new kit have been knocking around for years. Now, according to the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research’s latest annual report, local fabric production has been secured for the uniforms it designed and rollout is expected in 2027.

In 2023, the cost, according to a defence department submission to parliament, was hovering around R3.3bn, or R3bn to supply the 55,173 members of the army alone. That’s R54,374 per soldier.

One could get a nice tailored wool suit for less money, though that would be less useful in the Congo than, say, a few minutes’ worth of fuel for a helicopter gunship.