Hon
House Chair, the impact of the reduced ability of the South African National Defence Force to make sure that our borders are not porous is far reaching. Its assessment can only be done with the participation of all
the relevant sectors of government that are impacted upon by the presence within the national space of a population that cannot be accounted for.
Having said that, in relation to the programme of the South African National Defence Force relating to our responsibility for safeguarding our borders, I can confirm to this House that a review of border deployment of the South African Defence Force commenced in 2018 the military command council has, in May this year, approved already the proposals around what should be done in relation to human resource and technologies that we must deploy for safeguarding of our boarders. Those recommendations have been referred to the arms of service commands in order for them to make their own inputs.
I can also indicate that in our plans it is the intention of the defence command that we do deploy in this Medium Term Expenditure Framework the remaining seven units or companies that were outstanding according to the original scoping of the human resource that is needed for this deployment. The seven companies will be eventually deployed.
With respect to matters of discipline, Parliament will appreciate that we are talking about something that does not only affect the National Defence Force members but that speaks specifically about the challenges that we have. I can make the submission that building a defence force in times of peace in relation to levels of discipline will always be a challenge and can never compare with building and training a defence force during the times of war. [Time expired.] [Interjections.]