SA military is in a downward, deadly tailspin
The SANDF is now unable to fulfil its basic constitutional mandate to defend the country, never mind offer logistics and humanitarian assistances in times of natural and national disasters.
Members of the SANDF during an exercise demonstration at the SA Army Combat Training Centre in the Northern Cape, 9 November 2021. Picture: Jacques Nelles
A number of the South African Air Force’s front-line aircraft and helicopters are equipped with dispensers which can fire off flares as a way to divert heat-seeking missiles.
In a similar vein, government spokespeople are equipped with verbal ammunition they use to attack journalists and deflect attention from the horrifying story of the ongoing collapse of our military.
Department of defence spokesperson Siphiwe Dlamini zeroed in on alleged errors in a Sunday Times article about President Cyril Ramaphosa chartering a South African Airways Airbus A340 to fly him and a small delegation of people to the Democratic Republic of Congo to attend the 42nd Southern African Development Community summit.
The cost of the flight was a mere R1.6 million, not the R2.6 million the newspaper reported in its “misleading” story, claimed Dlamini. The charter was sourced, he said, because Inkwazi, the VVIP Boeing 737-7ED operated by 21 Squadron, along with other executive aircraft in the Air Force Base Waterkloof squadron inventory, “are currently out of commission”.
ALSO READ: SANDF: Ramaphosa’s ‘R2.6 million’ DRC flight reports are misleading
Nice deflection. Dlamini did not comment on the rest of the newspaper’s story – which was that the aircraft was out of commission because the department of defence had failed to timeously pay for updates to a vital subscription aviation data base … without which aircraft are considered not airworthy.
The failure to undertake this basic maintenance – often because of budget cuts or incompetence – has seen a number of other systems, including supersonic Gripen fighters, grounded by the air force.
The story is the same right across the SANDF, which is now unable to fulfil its basic constitutional mandate to defend the country, never mind offer logistics and humanitarian assistances in times of natural and national disasters.
No amount of clever deflection, or shooting the messenger, will change the fact that our military is in a downward, deadly tailspin.
