Ivor Powell An independent audit into the alleged misuse and possible misappropriation of R300-million earmarked for retraining ex- combatants has been forwarded to the Office of the Auditor General for further investigation.
KPMG’s audit into the South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF) service corps was commissioned by Deputy Minister of Defence Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge earlier this year. Ministry of Defence representative Sam Mkhwanazi termed the exercise “part of the normal audit procedure” but declined to comment on its contents in view of the fact that “the report is still to be discussed by the management of the SANDF”. However, it is understood the auditors found that large sums of money could not be satisfactorily accounted for and that the auditor general will be investigating the possibility of the wholesale misappropriation of funds. Sources said the alleged corruption could run to tens of millions of rands, on top of what has been described as “mismanagement of almost criminal proportions”. The service corps was set up by former minister of defence Joe Modise in 1995, with his former aide-de-camp, Lieutenant General Lambert Moloi, as its first chief. It has been headed up by Lieutenant General Andrew Masondo since the retirement two years ago of Moloi, who re-emerged as a major beneficiary of the government’s R32- billion weapons package. The corps’s brief was to provide training for a role in civilian life for former combatants – mainly from the Umkhonto weSizwe and Azanian People’s Liberation Army guerrilla forces who had foregone their education in favour of the liberation struggle. The corps was also to have placed the former soldiers in civilian jobs. It currently operates six regional centres as well as various national bases. But though it has swallowed up budgets of more than R300-million, the corps has produced relatively little. In the 1997/98 financial year, the latest for which statistics are available, the corps had an intake of 604, who were to have been retrained as builders and motor mechanics, among other occupations, defence representative Major Louis Kirstein said. Kirstein had no statistics on how many had been successfully placed in civilian occupations. But the success rate has been so low that the audit notes the corps could have trained each of its recruits to PhD level for the money it has cost to provide basic literacy.
Jane’s Defence correspondent Helmoet Rohmer Heitmann told the Mail & Guardian he believed the job of retraining of supernumerary ex-combatants would be better done by introducing a short service contract into the SANDF, where recruits would be trained in civilian skills while at the same time engaged in military training.
Meanwhile Mkhwanazi said the report had been submitted to the Council on Defence, a body which brings together the ministry, the Department of Defence and the chief of the SANDF. The council is currently thrashing out a new mandate for the service corps to make it more cost-effective.