Joe Modise and Ronnie Kasrils were the stars of the show at the unveiling of a new SAAF plane, writes Jan Taljaard
IT was not so much the aeroplane but the new minister of defence and his deputy that were the real focus of attention.
In the first public ceremony of its kind since the pre-arms embargo days of the early 1960s, Joe Modise arrived at the Waterkloof Airbase last week for a ceremony to unveil the South African Air Force’s new training aircraft, the Swiss- made PC-7MkII.
Resplendent in buttoned-up dark suit, Modise stepped out of his chauffeur-driven car amid a barrage of popping flashbulbs and a flurry of whispers among the almost all- white SAAF officer corps awaiting his arrival.
Momentarily forgotten on what should have been its day of glory was the new plane, a hybrid of the Pilatus PC-7 and PC-9 developed by Swiss company Pilatus to SAAF specifications and dubbed the “Astra”.
The new minister and his deputy, fellow Umkhonto weSizwe stalwart and now deputy minister of defence Ronnie Kasrils, stole the show. Both clearly enjoyed the attention.
Apart from MK warriors attending a ceremony at a base from which attacks on them were launched or planned in the past, there were other historical ironies.
SAAF moves to buy the Astra hit opposition from the United Nations’ Security Council in 1992 on grounds that it potentially circumvented the arms embargo — a Pilatus chief executive had resigned after disclosures that the plane’s forerunner was used as an attack craft in Iraq.
This objection was obviated by changing the wing design to remove hard points on which guns could be mounted.
A version of the craft was also bought by the now-extinct Bophuthatswana Air Force.
The purchase also aroused controversy when a locally developed candidate for a trainer to take the place of the ageing Harvard lost out during the evaluation process. The chief of the SAAF, Lieutenant General James Kriel, told those who attended the ceremony that the selection of the Astra had brought benefits to local industry by involving offset trade to the value of 55 percent of the aircraft’s total value.
Dragged from their huge hangars to accommodate the function were the modified Boeing 707s, used during the apartheid state’s wars for midair refuelling and electronic surveillance, whose existence the SADF once denied. Protruding bulges on their airframes told of the surveillance equipment on board.
The mood of the occasion was summed up by SAAF projects director Brigadier Bob King when he remarked during a media briefing: “It’s nice to be legitimate again …”