Former liberation army members say they are being treated unfairly by the defence force
Wisani wa ka Ngobeni
The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has been accused of discriminating against former members of the liberation movements during the force’s supplementary integration process last year.
The exercise, in Kimberley last December, was the SANDF’s second attempt to integrate members of “non-statutory armed forces” into the regular military. In 1994 about 14 000 members of liberation movements were integrated into the SANDF, but a number of members were not involved because they had amnesty applications pending. The latest integration process was aimed at accommodating them.
Senior members of former liberation armies, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla), are unhappy with the latest process, claiming it has been “rigged by old-order elements”.
In two confidential reports addressed to the SANDF’s top officials, MK and Apla representatives say the more than 100 non-statutory members who reported to the Kimberly military base were subjected to discrimination; some were accepted but were excluded from joining key military divisions.
The reports also accuse the head of the SANDF integration committee, Colonel JC Preller and his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel DH Muller of a series of discrepancies and unlawful acts.
The MK/Apla reports claim Preller and Muller orchestrated deliberate measures “to rig, disrupt and undermine the integration process with [the] explicit aim of excluding as many possible deserving non-statutory force members [from] the opportunity to integrate into the SANDF”.
The SANDF this week denied this, saying it was not possible for individuals to rig the integration process.
The MK representatives who compiled the reports are Colonel P Ricketts and Major M Kaulela. Apla’s representative is Lieutenant Colonel SP Matolweni. All are based in the SANDF’s MK/Apla offices and were part of the integration committee.
They claim Preller and Muller sidelined them during the integration process and they were excluded from the drafting of the operational plan for the process.
The MK/Apla representatives also claim that Preller denied them access to their members and rescheduled daily programmes during the integration process. The mix-up on the daily programmes made it difficult for the MK and Apla representatives to issue their members with service certificates and other necessary documentation.
They also asked the SANDF inspector general to conduct a probe into the allegations against Preller and Muller. SANDF spokesperson Colonel John Rolt said the inspector general has since conducted the inquiry and has found no wrongdoing.
But MK and Apla also want the chief of the SANDF, General Siphiwe Nyanda, and other senior SANDF officials to intervene.
“Our opinion is that a vast number of both ex-MK and Apla members had been unlawfully excluded from the integration processes since 27 April 1994,” they said.
In the Kimberly process, the representatives said, the SANDF also denied MK and Apla members their right to serve in the high-profile divisions of the force such as the military intelligence and special forces.
Rolt said this was due to “defence intelligence being overstaffed during previous intakes”. But this appears to contradict a defence intelligence “restricted” document explaining why non-statutory members should not be accepted within the organisation.
The document, compiled by Brigadier General LC Odendaal, the defence intelligence support services chief, does not cite “overstaffing” as the reason for not allowing non-statutory members into defence intelligence. The document shows that Odendaal excluded non-statutory members on the grounds that they had first to serve in other divisions of the force and later apply through normal command channels.
MK and Apla representatives said the procedure followed by defence intelligence was against the standard processes of integration and violated non-statutory members’ rights to serve in the SANDF.
“It became evident that a definite plan was designed to frustrate as many integratees [as] possible, more especially amnesty cases out of the integration process,” the report claimed.
MK and Apla members, the report charge, were “illicitly declared medically unfit” and forced to write tests to check their potential, while statutory members, those who had served in the old South African Defence Force, were not asked to do so.
The MK and Apla representatives charged that their members were unlawfully forced to retire from the SANDF on “falsified” medical grounds. An SANDF doctor declared them medically unfit to work for the force. The MK and Apla representatives said an independent medical opinion by the Northern Cape Department of Health found their members to be “physically and mentally fit”.
But they claim Preller insisted that the members undergo a third medical examination. The examination was conducted by another SANDF doctor who again found the members to be unfit and ordered that they be demobilised.
In his response, Rolt said the situation has been resolved, and all non-statutory members who were previously found to have been medically unfit were integrated after their cases were reviewed.
Rolt also denied allegations that Preller had insulted and tried to oust one of the MK representatives, Ricketts, from the integration committee when he tried to question aspects of the integration process.