Cape Town - Defence and Military Veterans Minister Thandi Modise has said the Department of Defence’s (DOD) problems such as under-funding, corruption, the competence of soldiers and issues with audited results must be tackled urgently.
Modise was speaking in Parliament during the debate on the Defence budget during which concerns were expressed by speakers about the department’s lack of control over spending, which had resulted in irregular expenditure, including a R3 billion overspend on salaries.
The minister said: “I have directed that work begin to reconfigure, reposition and reorganise the department to ensure coherent command and control and appropriate governance and accountability.”
Modise highlighted the DOD’s defence procurement system as the single most prevalent problem in the SANDF, and said consequence management would be relentlessly pursued.
“We simply cannot continue with non-compliance in the procurement of goods and services. We have agreed that any form of corrupt activity must be rooted out and pursued vigorously.”
Modise said the DOD’s accounting officer had previously been instructed to conduct a complete and rigorous review of the whole procurement system, to identify the root causes of the problems, and to put in place a robust and high integrity procurement system.
“In the main this has not happened, as we are awaiting the new Procurement Bill by the National Treasury, which will have a significant impact on the way forward,” Modise said.
She said the focus of her recent performance appraisal was on how to arrest the declining capabilities of the SANDF.
She said a scientific evaluation of the SANDF had painted a bleak picture of the country’s diminishing capabilities, largely because of persistent budget cuts.
“The ravages of underfunding and unserviceable capabilities against escalating tasks has had a devastating effect.”
She called for the verification of the DOD’s Movable and Tangible Assets which include land, buildings, vehicles, furniture, and equipment, and said a special audit needed to be done on all firearms, weapons and other statutory items in the DOD.
With regards to military land, in March, civil society activists issued a statement in which they said they had previously demonstrated that 67000 homes could be built on the Ysterplaat, Wingfield and Youngsfield Military Bases alone.
The activists from Ndifuna Ukwazi, Development Action Group, Community Organising Resource Centre and the Legal Resources Centre said the release of underutilised public land for affordable housing was because different government departments and entities failed to work together.
The statement said: “Perhaps the most shocking failure of intergovernmental collaboration in this regard is that 668 hectares of high-potential land in Cape Town are sitting largely vacant and underutilised under the custodianship of the DOD.”
They said that having four military bases, sprawled across desperately needed public land in the centre of Cape Town made no sense.
However the DOD argued that it still needed the entirety of Youngsfield Military Base, Wingfield Military Base and the Ysterplaat Airforce Base for its own operations.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za