One of the unintentionally funny aspects of ‘l’affaire Gupta’ – in which a chartered jet landed at Air Force Base Waterkloof, in Pretoria, carrying guests from India for a wedding being celebrated by the wealthy and politi- cally very-well-connected Gupta family, who were then escorted by police and traffic officers in a long convoy of luxury vehicles to the wedding venue, at Sun City near Rustenburg – which is currently causing uproar in South Africa, was the claim by some (particularly politicians) that national security had been, or could have been, compromised.

What is funny about this is that, to all practical intents and purposes, South Africa has no national security.
Of course, there is the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). On paper, it doesn’t look too bad, although some major weaknesses are immediately obvious. The South African Air Force’s (SAAF’s) maritime patrol capability is woefully inadequate, using aircraft that were designed nearly 80 years ago and actually built nearly 70 years ago! They have, of course, been modernised but their sensor systems are very basic and they are unarmed. There are also no air-to-air refuelling (tanker) aircraft or strategic transport aircraft. The South African Navy’s (SAN’s) frigates are good, modern ships but have no antisubmarine warfare (ASW) capability. The South African Army (SA Army) has very few modernised tanks.
These problems are bad enough. Nor are they purely of academic interest. The SAAF not only needs modern maritime patrol capability to protect South Africa’s marine resources, but it has also been flying antipiracy patrols over the northern Mozambican Channel. The lack of tanker and/or strategic transport aircraft made the SANDF’s deployment in the Central African Republic untenable and unsupportable. Over the past two decades, tanks have proven themselves very useful in many operations other than conventional war, including peace operations in the Balkans in the 1990s and current security operations in Afghanistan. And, across the Atlantic, Colombian drug traffickers have successfully developed and used small, primitive submarines which are about 30 m long and can dive to 20 m, to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Central America and Mexico. So ASW capability is no longer just about warfighting.
Much worse than this, however, is the fact that most of the SANDF capabilities that do exist cannot be regarded as combat effective. It is important to stress that there are elements within the SANDF that are combat effective, but these amount to only a minority of the total force. Thus, at any given time, only one of the SAN’s four frigates is at high readiness (combat ready). Only 14 of the SAAF’s 26 Gripens are in operation, with the remaining 12 in long-term storage. Reportedly, the Gripen squadron has been allocated a total of 150 flying hours for this financial year. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) recommends a minimum annual flying requirement of 180 hours for each fighter pilot! (Not all Nato air forces achieve this, while others exceed it, but all Nato air forces signifi- cantly exceed the allocation currently given to the SAAF’s fighter pilots.)
Currently, the SA Army is training a battalion that has been assigned to the new United Nations (UN) Intervention Brigade in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There can be no doubt that that unit, and any other attached SANDF elements, will be fully combat capable. And the SA Army troops deployed in Darfur, in Sudan, will also be fully operational. But they, plus a few other units like 44 Parachute Regiment, are likely to comprise the army’s only truly combat-capable elements.
Overall, most of the SANDF is capable only of border patrol, low-intensity peacekeeping and antipiracy operations. This is a result of a serious lack of funding. The defence budget is completely inade- quate to sustain the SANDF as a truly operational force – or, alternatively, the current SANDF is too big for what the country is willing to spend on defence.
None of this is secret. None of this was done covertly. The limited budgets, the reductions in equipment, the delays in re-equipment, the restrictions on opera- tions – all were revealed publicly. Nobody seemed to care. National security was a non-issue, not least among politicians of all parties. And, despite ‘l’affaire Gupta’, despite the Central African Republic, it still is, in real terms. This attitude has already cost lives and damaged the country’s credibility. It will do so again unless the defence budget is increased or South Africa abandons international power pretensions.