Chairperson, it's time we started using the SANDF for the purposes for which it was intended. It should not be a blank cheque to pay off political constituencies, as has been done for the past 15 years. It should be there to serve all South Africans in doing what it is best suited to do.
I'll give you an example. The most expensive programme in this budget is Air Defence. That's because we are paying the bulk of the cost of the BAe/Saab - British Aerospace/Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget - contract as the Grippen fighters get delivered. Let us not forget that this contract was more expensive than similar deals done by BAe with Australia and India, and was more that half as much, again, as the price of the option first selected by the Air Force. This has been one of the worst examples of the Defence budget being used for purposes other than defence.
There are three military strategic objectives set out in the Department of Defence Strategic Business Plan for 2009. They are: to enhance and maintain comprehensive defence capabilities; to promote peace, security and stability in the region and on the continent; and to support the people of South Africa.
So, before we are asked to vote on the spending of R32 billion, it's incumbent on us to ask whether those objectives are being achieved. What then are our defence capabilities? How prepared are we? Who knows? Maybe the Minister knows, but she's not letting us know. For us not to have been briefed on force preparedness before this Budget Vote debate, Minister, is unconscionable.
The Minister has raised the issue of whether or not such a briefing should be held in private - as the department wants - safe, we are told, from the ears of South Africa's enemies. Minister, I don't buy your argument. Any hostile power that had to wait for a parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence briefing to decide where our weaknesses lay would not be an enemy to be concerned about. [Laughter.]
If the SANDF was prepared, it would not be afraid to say so. It is clear that we don't have enough pilots. Minister, is the fact that we are losing them to South African Airway a good thing? I don't think so. Our pilots don't have enough flying hours; our vehicles work only 50 to 60% of the time; our forces don't have enough ammunition; we have a third of the reserves we should have.
But this government wants to hide from voters their lack of defence leadership, and so it uses national security as a spurious pretext to hide the truth from South Africa's people.
On the second criterion, peacekeeping, it is a pass with distinction, but at what cost? Our original force design was for one battalion-strength peacekeeping operation at a time. We have three. That's reduced SANDF capacity. Joint Operations Chief Lieutenant-General Themba Matanzima says that the return of the troops from Burundi will be very welcome because the military feels overstretched.
Some good peacekeeping work has been done. But it should stop here. We are pleased the Burundi deployment will be ended. But we urge strongly that it not be replaced with any new mission. Those troops need to return home to boost our capabilities here, to retrain and to see their families. Peacekeeping should be about regional stability and not about grandiose continental posturing, which you are good at.
On the third criterion: support for the people of South Africa, you have heard about the lack of borderline security. On rural security, the closing down of commandos has not been replaced by any police capability.
The Institute for Security Studies' work on the impact of the closing down of commandos says that: "The extent to which the police have filled this gap varies from virtually nothing to only partial implementation".
And, "The most worrying aspect is that commandos were closed down even in places where no substitute was in place."
So who is protecting our villagers, our farmworkers, our farmers? Nobody.
All these problems - border security, rural security, reserves, material - are not the result of some military failure. They are the direct result of poor political decision-making.
But, Minister, you have an opportunity now to make a decisive break with the past.