Instead of South African soldiers being sent on deadly foreign missions, they should be used to guard the country's borders and provide security to citizens, said DA MP Shahid Esau yesterday.
Last week, President Jacob Zuma ordered the deployment of 400 soldiers to the Central African Republic whose capital and president are under threat by heavily armed rebel forces.
The troops include members of the elite Special Forces and Parachute battalion.
The deployments - which the defence force claims will only protect South Africans and South African interests in the country and assist with the disarmament and reintegration of rebel forces - have been called into question, especially as the defence force is severely overstretched by current peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan's Darfur.
The army has said it would resort to deploying thousands of civilian reservists in future peacekeeping missions. There are currently 15000 army reservists.
Late last year, both Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo called on Zuma to urgently send troops to help fight off rebel forces .
Esau said that, while there was no problem in deploying troops on peacekeeping missions in principle, such deployments should not be carried out to the detriment of the country's sovereignty.
"If one can avail troops without compromising one's own security, then fine - but only if our security is not compromised.
"We are aware of situations requiring the deployments of troops to our borders, which have not been done earlier because of manpower shortages," he said.
South Africa currently has about 1700 soldiers deployed along its borders with Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Mozambique and Lesotho.
By next year, thousands more are to be deployed to the border with Namibia and Botswana, which currently remains unguarded.
Defence analyst Helmoed Heitman said South Africa simply did not have the capacity for further deployments.
He said while the military norm was for four battalions to be in reserve for every one deployed, South Africa's defence force operated on a one-in-three cycle. South Africa's battalions comprise between 800 and 900 soldiers each.
"With our limited troop numbers, if you reduce this cycle you will experience major problems, especially in training.
"Currently our troops deploy six months out of every 18 months."
Heitman said: "With our current border deployments and plans to increase troops along the borders, we will require another eight battalions in reserve. This means we need 16 battalions when we currently only have 13."
He said the tank and armoured battalions - which were not at full strength - were being used for infantry deployments.
" If we had to send a full battalion to Mali, it would break the army.
"We do not have the necessary aircraft to transport additional troops to Central African Republic.
"The situation with our aircraft is so bad, we will now have to charter aircraft to ferry our soldiers."