Hon Chairperson, hon Ministers and Members of Parliament, Mr Maynier from the DA wants to know about the combat-readiness of the SA National Defence Force. By that he means he wants to know how many men and women we have in the army. He wants to know how many weapons we have in the army. He wants the public, including those who may be enemies of South Africa, to have that information. [Applause.]
We told him in the portfolio committee that he was asking for impossible information. We are not going to give that information to you. It is what I call "classified information". [Applause.] You will get certain pieces of information from the army, but not everything, not classified information. No country in the whole world will tell you how many men and women they have in their army. Forget about it. [Interjections.]
Hon Tolo, I was a member of - one of commanders - of uMkhonto weSizwe. I still have my uniform and my boots. I invite you to come and inspect my body when I die. You will find it wrapped in an army uniform similar to that one. I'm not going to throw it away. [Applause.] Having said that, the Department of Defence - I'm sorry about my voice - is competing for funds from the Treasury against many other departments. This means that it is not possible to receive the full amount requested. The present world economic meltdown is making matters worse.
Nevertheless, our men and women in uniform have to do what they must do, namely be ready to defend and protect our country and its people with the limited funding received from the Treasury. Although much has been said about veterans and the fact that a task team has been established, I nevertheless still want to say something about military veterans.
In the foreword to the strategic business plan for 2009-10, the hon Minister of Defence wrote: Veterans have become part and parcel of the organisation and of everything we do as we design, implement and sustain programmes that serve them. It must be the mission of the DOD to address their needs all the time, across the full range of support services that our Government has committed to providing to them ... that the lives of our veterans and those of their families are improved, and that these individuals are further recognised for their contribution to ensuring that a democratic South Africa is realised.
[Applause.]
In terms of the Defence Act of 1999, a military veteran is a person who fought in World War One and World War Two and also, to some extent, in the Korean tensions of 1952. The Act includes those men and women who fought against the policy of apartheid, some of whom sacrificed their own lives. Some were killed in Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique and others here at home. Some of those who survived these wars of liberation were not integrated into the SANDF when hostilities stopped. It is those comrades, those military veterans and their families, who are of great concern to me and I'm sure to many of you.
One of the resolutions of the Polokwane conference states that a presidential commission on military veterans should be established in the government, and that a comprehensive social package for all ex-combatants of former liberation armies should be introduced by the state by the end of 2008. I'm not sure whether this resolution has been implemented.
The Defence Act was passed 10 years ago, and we are told that although discussions have been ongoing in the Department of Defence, the Treasury pointed out during a briefing that there has been no written request from the Department of Defence for funds to be set aside for military veterans. In other words, there has never been any budget left ...