The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) has lambasted the South African Defence Force’s (SANDF) transformation policy, saying it has contributed to thousands of experienced white officers leaving the force.
The party’s spokesperson on defence, Pieter Groenewald, said the policy, introduced two years ago, required more than 5 000 white senior officers, most of them at the rank of staff sergeant to lieutenant general, to leave the force.
”The most shocking of the transformation figures is that it is precisely the most experienced and knowledgeable members of the defence force who have been affected the most.
”Millions of rands of tax money, which had been invested in these people, have now been thrown into the water,” he said in a statement on Monday.
Because the policy has pushed some of the most experienced members out of the force, Groenewald said SANDF was now relying on external expertise to carry out some of its tasks.
”Tenders are now being invited for logistical control systems … where even foreigners are being invited to submit tenders.
”A foreign tender and appointment creates a serious security risk. A foreign company that has complete insight into the logistical picture of the defence force would know exactly what the SANDF is capable of and will know its weak points,” he said. — Sapa