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SANDF’s Tone-Deaf Golf Day Amid Financial Crisis

Dear Editor

The Democratic Alliance will submit Parliamentary questions to Defence Minister Angie Motshekga, demanding a full breakdown of the costs, funds raised, and spending of the South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF) latest extravagant Golf Day. This follows mounting concerns over the defence force’s financial mismanagement and systemic failures.

The SANDF’s choice to host this luxury event at Pinnacle Point Golf Course in Mossel Bay on 19 September 2025, under the misleading theme “Swinging for Service, Honour and Hope”, is outrageously tone-deaf. Particularly, it fails to pay medical bills for veterans, settle outstanding DRC deployment allowances, or account for R813 million in missing compensation funds.

While the Department of Defence cannot pay over R1 million in outstanding medical debts to Gariep Medi-Clinic in Kimberley – resulting in severely ill sick military veterans being turned away. It somehow finds the time and money to host yet another golf day, complete with lavish sponsorship tiers, branded giveaways and exclusive dinners at a golf course that is not even remotely close to any of its bases. The irony is sick, Pinnacle Point is not a pinnacle at all; it is geographically isolated, far from SANDF operations and even further from the real needs of the defence force.

The mere logistical, accommodation and travel costs of SANDF top brass, generals and personnel to the event will be enough to cover their Kimberley Medi-Clinic bill or to offer financial support to the families of all 14 fallen soldiers. This while troops who served in the DRC are still pleading for unpaid allowances, even as unions were locked in meetings with the Army this week to try and resolve the matter, which they insist is settled.

The DA calls on the Minister of Defence, Angie Motshekga, to give South Africans a public undertaking that every cent raised will be declared to Parliament.

While the SANDF swings and the Minister swerves, the people who serve are the ones who suffer.

Regards

Nicholas Gotsell MP
DA NCOP Member on Security & Justice

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