Defence and Military Veterans Dept needs to be restructured: Cilliers

The founder of the Institute of Security Studies, Jackie Cilliers says the Department of Defence and Military Veterans needs to be restructured.

This as South Africa’s expenditure in the Defence Force will be closely monitored when Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana delivers his Budget Speech tomorrow.

Government’s budget reprioritisation in the past few years has resulted in funding being moved away from investment in military equipment.

The absence of wars globally was long used as a main reason for lack of investment in the military.

But the recent attacks of South African National Defence Force members deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo has exposed the impact of the underfunding in the country’s soldiers.

“We need a leadership politically and within the military that focuses on excellence and that focuses on really preparing the Department of Defence for what we use it for. We primarily use the Department of Defence for support to the police, for peacekeeping and for emergency response, and we should prepare, fund and equip and train the department for that and stop pretending that we have a department that can fulfil what is the constitutionally mandated function of defence of our territorial integrity. Instead of using the department to support, for example, our border control function, what government did was to establish a border management agency. Instead of reducing and constraining costs, that now means that 2/3 of our budget goes to personnel expenditure and making sure that we have a department that is young and capable and that has a throughput of personnel,”