Budget cuts for SANDF place SA’s ‘sovereignty under threat’

SA’s department of defence (DoD), the parent of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF), has had its budget allocation by National Treasury dropped by a staggering R49bn since 2008, with far-reaching implications for the performance of our military structures.

This emerged during DoD’s appearance before the parliamentary committee on defence on Wednesday.

The committee was told that between 2008 and 2017, the DoD budget allocation by National Treasury decreased by R16.2bn.

But things have since escalated, with another chop of R32.4bn happening in the past four years.

With this, SANDF’s Maj-Gen Thembelani Xundu lamented, the inevitable consequence will be the deterioration of the country’s standing within the geopolitical space.

Committee member DA MP Kobus Marais said the worsening financial position of the DoD puts the country’s “sovereignty under threat” and must be arrested before it is too late.

The borderline of our country will continue being porous unabated. The 15 subunits have proven that they can only go so far and not that much.

—  Maj-Gen Thembelani Xundu

Xundu detailed the “daunting and adverse impact” that the budget cuts are anticipated to have on the country’s military performance, which he said was expected to soon be below par.

Porous borders

According to Xundu, the country’s already free-for-all borders will degenerate further as budget cuts will affect the safeguarding of the borders by DoD.

“The borderline of our country will continue being porous unabated. The 15 subunits have proven that they can only go so far and not that much,” Xundu rung the warning bell.

“How do we generate 22 units from the current 15 when government’s overall intended direction says downward manage the human resources baseline of the SANDF and then the requirement is to scale up to 22 subunits?”

With the ongoing budget cuts, Xundu said the military was left helpless and the overflow of illegal foreigners into the country would escalate.

SA’s geopolitical reputation on the line

Xundu submitted that the international prominence of the country and SANDF would suffer a great deal owing to the budget cuts.

This would ultimately lead to the country being a laughing stock for having a “Mickey Mouse” military on the global stage.

“We have foreign learners in all our training institutions and centres of experience. (The budget cuts) reduce the geopolitical reputation that SA has and that the SANDF has,” said Xundu.

“It also means the operational gravitas that all in the country and the continent think we have is lost.”

Participation in UN peace mission

Not only was the country’s geopolitical reputation at stake, charged Xundu, but SANDF might have to reconsider partaking in some of the UN peace missions with the limited financial resources it was confronted with.

“The SANDF is particularly going to suffer because not only will it be limping on warm bodies but also its ageing equipment that is also deployed with soldiers to the UN missions.

“We do not have the required budget to maintain the equipment,” said Xundu.

SANDF’s lagging technology 

For a long time, Xundu added, SA had been known for leading in military technology on the continent.

However, the consistent budget cuts had resulted in the SANDF losing this position to countries that were serious about funding their militaries, such as Egypt and Algeria.

“We are now rated number three on the continent after Egypt and Algeria. If you go 10 years ago you will see that we were number two to Egypt, but at some point we were number one,” said Xundu.

“Our urge has always been our development of technology. No other African country, including Egypt, could develop technology to the extent that we were, but when the budget cuts happen it means technological advancement has been lost.”

The unintended consequence of this, he said, was that the SANDF was bound to have inferior fighting equipment in battle compared with its adversaries.

“If that happens, no South African will be proud of the SANDF because of the performance that will be a result of that situation.”

After the conclusion of Xundu’s presentation, MPs were left stunned.

Marais lamented the “bleak picture” that the presentation painted of the adverse impact of the budget cuts on the country’s military, calling for President Cyril Ramaphosa to be informed speedily of this.

“This is a totally unsustainable situation. Does the National Treasury and the commander in chief (Ramaphosa) have this bleak picture? Do they know the predicament we are in?” said Marais.

“This is basically tying the hands of the SANDF members behind their backs. This will cause soldiers to be killed like we already had in Mozambique and the DRC.

“We now know that our sovereignty is under threat because we cannot protect it.”

State capture-implicated defence deputy minister Thabang Makwetla attempted to downplay the severity of the situation by having a go at the “unfortunate language” used in the presentation.

According to him, it was “not all doom” as projected by the SANDF. He called for a solution-based approach instead of lamenting future problems.

“It is not like everything is lost — we can turn things around. There is a lot of money within the department of defence that can be used, but there are many leakages that must be stopped,” he said.