Pirates to make SANDF walk the plank?

The SA National Defence Force should perhaps more accurately be named the SA National Defunct Force. After all, it has soldiers that it cannot deploy, ships that it cannot sail, and aircraft that it cannot fly.

So let’s not get too excited about the news that the SA Navy is dispatching a force off Madagascar to guard against the ever-widening remit of plundering Somali pirates. Rather than quaking, the battle-tested pirates are probably licking their lips at the prospect of adding a nice, new shiny frigate to their growing fleet of hijacked vessels.

The SA military, once hated but nevertheless feared, is now merely derided for its incompetence and ill discipline. An SA army that once held off the “rooi gevaar” in Angola now mostly blunders about with its trousers around its ankles — old, fat, diseased, unfit and hard of hearing.

SA has the oldest infantry troops in the world and they fail on almost every military criterion. In 2005 the SANDF reported that 23% were HIV-positive and that deafness and clinical obesity each claimed another quarter of the army muster.

Last year the SANDF told a parliamentary committee that “no humane exit mechanism” could be found to get rid of these troops. Apparently euthanasia is not an option. That left the military in a position where it has troops but cannot use them but, hell, it all helps to ease the unemployment statistics.

HIV-infection in the army has been estimated to be as high as 40%, but no one knows for sure. The snippy Defence and Military Veterans Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said recently she would no more oblige soldiers to divulge their HIV status than she would ask Democratic Alliance shadow minister David Maynier, who posed the question, how many of his own family were infected.

What one does know, however, is that the SANDF cannot account for 82 000 weapons, almost 20% of its armoury, and that employing these absent-minded lard-arses soaks up some 60% of the army and navy budgets.

One of the three new R1,6-billion submarines, the SAS Manthatisi, is already out of action. A sailor plugged it into the wrong dock power point — AC instead of DC current — frying its circuits. The Manthatisi was then damaged further when it hit the quay and it is now unsurprisingly taking an early overhaul, which means in won’t be operational again before 2013.

This all happened in safe harbour. One can only imagine what hurt these guys could inflict on themselves in open waters. The most cost-effective option might be to pump the subs full of helium and deploy them as barrage balloons around Parliament.

Then there is the SA Air Force, which like the navy and the army suffers from severe underfunding, so has for years been unable to meet its strategic objectives in air combat capability, transport and maritime surveillance. Simply put, it doesn’t have enough flyers — fewer than half of those needed for the 25 Gripen it is currently taking delivery of from Sweden.

And even if it did, the SAAF lacks the maintenance skills to keep planes in the air. And, even it had the skills, it doesn’t have the budget for the requisite flying hours.

So instead of burning fuel, it admits that vastly increased use is being made of flight simulators as an alternative. That is just perfect, if the SAAF’s next air war can be arranged with the enemy to take place at a downtown Pretoria video arcade.

Collectively, all this makes for a disturbing picture of the SANDF’s capacity to protect the country’s borders and is almost certainly understated. Ever since the overweeningly arrogant Sisulu has become minister, the trend has been to hide as many as possible of the SANDF’s failings behind the catch-all cover of “national security”.

Ah, well. At least, the pirates will find Durban more salubrious as a base than Mogadishu.