Howard Barrell
Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota returned to Tempe military base outside Bloemfontein on Wednesday to resume his hands-on treatment of the crisis there after a young black officer shot dead seven white officers and army support staff, and wounded five others.
Lekota was also due to attend the funerals of a number of the dead.
He was accompanied by senior South African National Defence Force (SANDF) officers on a flight from Cape Town. On Tuesday, Lekota gave MPs a series of briefings on the tragedy, in which the young black officer involved, Lieutenant Sibusiso Madubela, was also shot dead.
Lekota has impressed MPs and observers with his handling of the crisis, which has included strenuous personal efforts to reduce racial tensions at the base after the incident.
Lekota is also setting up a ministerial inquiry into the shooting. It will complement an army board of investigation appointed by the head of the SANDF, Lieutenant General Siphiwe Nyanda, and an ongoing police probe.
Lekota said the ministerial inquiry would investigate, among other things, a press report in the Sunday World on the weekend before the Tempe shooting – the reliability of which he challenged – which alleged widespread ill discipline and the theft of several hundred weapons from Tempe in recent months.
He also wanted the inquiry to look into a breach of the security perimeter around the base shortly after the shooting, the theft of a minibus and a threat issued in the name of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging daubed on a wall of the hangar in which the vehicle had been parked.
Lekota announced on Tuesday that the SANDF would not provide a guard of honour for Madubela but that it would pay for his funeral, which is due to take place in Umtata on October 2.
In an eloquent address to members of Parliament’s joint defence committee on Tuesday, Lekota said he was deeply worried about possible racial dimensions to the Tempe shooting. “The life of any individual, whatever their colour, sits heavily on my conscience,” he told them. “It doesn’t matter what political party they come from; they may even hate me and my views; but the life of any individual is important.”
Referring to the peaceful settlement achieved in South Africa between 1990 and 1994, Lekota added: “We know in the silence of our rooms and in the isolation of our hearts and minds that what happened in Bloemfontein is precisely what we wanted to avoid when we started negotiating.”