Dear Editor
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is gravely concerned by the accelerating collapse of South Africa’s defence capabilities, starkly laid bare in today’s Armscor presentation to the Joint Standing Committee on Defence.
This is not just about late maintenance or delayed procurement. The SANDF is facing a full-blown capability crisis. Our Navy is barely seaworthy. The Air Force can hardly get off the ground. And our ability to monitor or defend our vast coastline is close to zero. Years of underfunding, policy paralysis, and absent leadership have brought us here.
The Navy’s key assets, its submarines and frigates, are mostly dockside relics. Armscor’s Dockyard, once the engine room of naval support, is now a hollowed-out shell. It no longer has the in-house capacity to conduct major refits without outsourcing critical work.
But it is the state of the Air Force that truly paints the picture. Across all categories, fighters, helicopters, transports, and trainers, aircraft availability has plummeted to near-zero.
South Africa’s maritime reconnaissance and surveillance capability has all but collapsed. Vast stretches of our coastline and Exclusive Economic Zone are going unpatrolled and unprotected, leaving the door wide open for illegal fishing, piracy, trafficking, and environmental degradation. We are blind in our own backyard.
This didn’t happen overnight. The 2015 Defence Review clearly warned that the SANDF was heading toward block obsolescence and operational collapse. It offered a roadmap. But it was ignored. No funding. No implementation. No urgency. No accountability.
To make matters worse, the Department of Defence missed a binding deadline to table a formal reassessment of the 2015 Defence Review by 31 October 2024. Parliament is still waiting. In its place, the Department now punts vague promises of a so-called “Journey to Greatness”, a slogan with no plan, no timeline, and no credibility. South Africa doesn’t need slogans. It needs strategy, structure, and solutions.
This is not just about rusting ships and grounded aircraft. It is about a defence department that cannot prioritise in a shrinking budget. It’s about an SANDF becoming symbolic instead of functional. And it’s about political leaders who deflect blame instead of fixing what is broken.
The DA calls for urgent and concrete action:
- A full audit of the SANDF’s reconnaissance, surveillance, and response capabilities, both in the air and at sea.
- A parliamentary debate on the non-implementation of the 2015 Defence Review, and a firm deadline for its long-overdue reassessment.
- Immediate investment in affordable and effective maritime surveillance platforms, including drones, shore radar, Inshore Patrol Vessels, and long-range patrol aircraft.
- A full investigation into the collapse of maintenance and engineering capacity at Armscor Dockyard and in the SAAF technical environment.
- Political accountability from the Minister of Defence, Minister Angie Motshekga, and the leadership of the Department for presiding over this steady decline.
We need a defence force that is capable, credible, and aligned with the real needs of the country, not one that performs ceremonial fly-pasts while operational capacity crumbles.
The DA will not stop fighting for our men and women in uniform, for the integrity of our defence institutions, and for a national defence force that serves the people, not the political elite.
Regards
Chris Hattingh MP
DA Spokesperson on Defence & Military Veterans