‘I’ve been in the army since 1989 and besides basic training, the only course I’ve been on is a driving course,†says 39-year-old Lance Coporal Daniel Mkwanazi.
‘I’m frustrated and humiliated because my career is going nowhere.â€
Mkwanazi is one of several black soldiers, who were part of the old South African Defence Force (SADF), who are becoming increasingly disillusioned by their lack of progress in the new South African National Defence Force (SANDF).
Many have banded together to form the Soldiers’ Forum (SF) and the Former SADF Members Forum (FSADFMF). Themba Moko of the SF claims to represent about 30 000 soldiers.
They claim that their concerns — put to Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and President Thabo Mbeki — have gone unheard and that various attempts to hold public meetings and bring attention to their cause have, in some instances, met with arrests.
The soldiers allege they are being discriminated against ‘for fighting with the boers†and that, because of their SADF past, they have been overlooked for courses to enhance their careers. They say they have not received adequate training in career planning and are not fairly represented in the top structures of the defence department.
Moko says that former black SADF soldiers have not, as yet, been informed about the findings of a board of inquiry into allegations of unfair treatment of black former SADF soldiers. The inquiry was instituted in 2000.
‘In the old SADF we were not allowed to choose the courses we wanted, our career paths were chosen for us by the whites and now it seems we are going nowhere in terms of courses and promotion,†says Moko.
‘Integration is life. If we remain as we are we will not get better benefits, we will not be able to support our families properly and what will my pension look like at the end of all this?†asks Mkwanazi.
Moko claims white officers who represented the SADF at the Joint Military Co-ordinating Council (JMCC) between 1993 and 1994, when the foundations were laid for the integration of the SADF, Umkhonto weSizwe, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army and the armies from the former homelands (Transkei, Ciskei, Venda and Bophutatswana) into a single army, did not represent the views and aspirations of black SADF soldiers. ‘We didn’t have a place at the table,†he says.
He believes that while they were systematically marginalised during apartheid, this has continued in the new dispensation.
The fact that former SADF members still have their old army numbers also exposes them to discrmination and marginalisation when it comes to access to courses that will result in promotion.
The late Rocky Williams, former head of the programme for security sector transformation at the Institute for Security Studies, in the paper, Integration or Absorption — The Creation of the South African National Defence Force, 1993 to 1999, claims that ‘the forced design of the new SANDF was largely based on that of the former SADF, and that the strategies, doctrines and procedures remained unaltered (prompting one senior SADF officer at the time to comment that ‘the SADF got more than 80% of what it wanted out of the JMCC process’).
The integration process was to be based on SADF structures and SADF rules and regulations — a phenomenon that was to undermine the capacity of non-SADF forces to influence the integration process in the initial integration period.â€
The old regime’s attitudes, arrogance and racism would have initially carried through into the new army, perhaps entrenching an SADF status quo where black soldiers were marginalised.
Len le Roux, head of the defence sector programme at the ISS, believes the oversight mechanisms in place during integration would have allowed for these sorts of concerns to have been heard much earlier. Le Roux says the existence of a parliamentary integration oversight committeee, a joint standing committee on integration and a ministerial oversight committee ‘allowed for grievances and disputes to be heardâ€.
Both Williams and Le Roux believe the resignation of many of the ‘old guardâ€, following the farcical coup attempt report by then-defence chief George Meiring, also cleared the upper echelons of the defence force, leading to a ‘more transformed†one.
Sam Mkhwanazi, spokesperson for the ministry of defence, could not be reached for comment.