Defensive exercise: The shortfall in spending for the SANDF took its toll on vital operations
NEWS ANALYSIS
By the end of March this year South Africa had been due to have a rudimentary cyberwarfare capability, to protect against the kinds of looming online threats that keep governments around the world awake at night.
Instead, South Africa now has a draft — rather than a final — cyberwarfare strategy.
“The establishment of a Cyber Command Centre (Phase 1) was not achieved during FY2016/17 due to financial constraints,” the recently released annual report of the department of defence disclosed.
Other, perhaps more immediate, threats to the nation also continued to go unaddressed because of the severe shortfall in defence spending.
In the past financial year the navy fell 32% short of its own target for time to be spent at sea, with hours on the water dropping by a vertiginous 2 579 compared with the previous year.
The nature of navy missions are not disclosed in any detail, but they lean heavily towards patrols intended to discourage illegal fishing by foreign trawlers in South African waters and anti-piracy initiatives, particularly in the Mozambique channel, which carries heavy traffic in and out of South African ports.
Officially the steep decline in time on the water was a result of the “unavailability of vessels at the required level of capability due to maintenance cycle delays and operational defects”, but privately officials are happy to translate: there was not enough money to keep ships afloat.
With such a severe shortage of funds the current approach is to “mitigate the decline of the capabilities of the South African National Defence Force”, as Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula puts it — even before possible deeper budget cuts.
Yet the defence force still found nearly R100-million to pay for advertising in the past financial year, an increase of almost 12 times from the previous year, plus another nearly R200-million paid to consultants to count tanks and tents, and figure out how to account for them in future.
But all of that was money well spent, the department says, and some of it was historically inevitable.
The 2016-2017 financial year saw an unusual confluence of once-off events, defence department spokesperson Siphiwe Dlamini said, all of which financial reporting rules demanded must be classified as “advertising” — even though that is a poor description for commemorations of the fallen.
In July last year a large South African ceremonial team spent two weeks in France for the centenary of the Battle of Deville Wood, where a South African infantry brigade suffered terrible losses during World War I. Costs also included the completion of an upgrade to the South African-owned memorial there to reflect the sacrifice of members of the South African Native Labour Contingent, such as the 260 buried two hours away in Arques-la-Bataille.
Although 21 000 members of the contingent served in France, they were previously largely unrecognised.
Even as that commemoration was going on, the Castle of Good Hope (in echo of which the Deville Wood memorial is shaped) continued a year of events to mark the 350th anniversary of the laying of its foundations. Among the events at the Castle was the unveiling of statues to four men whose fights against colonists were considered an inspiration for anti-apartheid fighters: King Cetshwayo kaSenzangakhona of the amaZulu, King Langalibalele kaMthimkhulu of the amaHlubi, King Sekhukhune of the BaPedi and arguably South Africa’s first-ever freedom fighter, Doman of the Gorachouqua clan.
Then, in February 2017, the commemoration of the sinking of the SS Mendi culminated in a ceremony in the English Channel, at the site where 616 South African troops — almost all the members of the Native Labour Contingent — died. The deployment of the frigate SAS Amatola for that tribute was charged as advertising, as were the travel expenses of relatives who took part in associated events.
“The term ‘advertising’ may be misplaced when you are talking about things like these, but that is what we must put it under,” said Dlamini.
He said that expense item would drop back into its usual range around single-digit millions in the current financial year, figures for which will be released towards the end of 2018.
Also unlikely to recur next year is the R109-million the defence department paid consultants PwC for “asset verification”.
Despite that payment the auditor general warned that the defence department “did not disclose all movable tangible capital assets accurately”, and had made mistakes worth at least R2.8-billion in accounting for its assets.
But the department insisted the payment, for a four-year project now ended, represented good value for money.
“Specialised military assets are unique. Even national treasury doesn’t know how to classify some of them,” said Edem Abotsi, chief compliance officer of the defence department.
This has led to some disagreements with the auditor general.
One example Abotsi cites is tents. A tent in storage is an asset, the value of which can be realised. A tent that is used and then returned to storage is a used asset, with less value but some value still. But a tent housing troops deployed in, say, Sudan, may have a negative asset value, because it would cost more to transport back to South Africa than it is worth — and that is before somebody shoots holes in it.
So PwC, said Abotsi, not only counted tents as part of a physical verification of a huge number of assets, but “helped on the accounting part” and also trained soldiers in both the counting and the accounting.
Like the PwC project, the R87-million the defence matériel division spent on “project management consultants” will deliver ongoing benefits with a repeat in costs, Abotsi and Dlamini said.
That money was largely in aid of creating a “through life capability management”, an approach to managing tight budgets by approaching acquisitions and in-service management from the perspective of the military capability sought, or which is to be developed.
Over time, the department hopes, the large amounts spent on consultants will help it to move towards clean audits, much as recasting South Africa’s military history to include black people will move it towards being accepted as more than a necessary evil.
For the time being, however, it acknowledges that it can neither account for itself properly nor count on public support if the scissors come for its budget.
“Certain sectors of society believe that having a defence force is a waste of money and time because of the lack of understanding of the mandate,” said Dlamini.