I think it’s a bit naive, if not disingenuous, of us to start expressing shock and horror at the fact that the SANDF hierarchy has been dabbling in politics, and even conducting their own foreign policy on the side. These are not soldiers, but politicians in military garb. They always have been.
The entire top structure of the defence force is made up of veterans of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the exiled ANC. At the time of the integration of the armed forces in 1994, some in the PAC and the BC movement complained that their people had been overlooked and that most of the posts had gone to MK combatants. But then, to the victors often go the spoils. The ANC had won an overwhelming majority in the election and therefore felt entitled to take all the marbles, so to speak. As a result, the new SANDF, or its leadership, is essentially a transmutation of MK.
The top echelon, from the overall chief, Gen Rudzani Maphwanya, to the head of the navy, Vice Admiral Monde Lobese, head of the army Lt-Gen Lawrence Mbatha, head of the air force Lt-Gen Wiseman Mbambo, and the head of SANDF’s joint operations division, Lt-Gen Siphiwe Sangweni, cut their teeth in the furnace of ANC politics in exile as MK combatants. They underwent military training in places such as Angola, East Germany, the Soviet Union and many other socialist-aligned countries.
The government’s inability to rein in the generals has obviously given them wings
MK was not a conventional army but a guerrilla movement. It was a part of, and not apart from, all other projects and activities of the ANC. Unlike a conventional army, there was no distinction between the political and military, and it follows, therefore, that their training and socialisation would have been different from that of a regular army. Their loyalty has always been to the organisation — its aims and objectives — and not to a state. They’re therefore all dyed-in-the wool comrades, not in a military, but in a political, sense. They’re all veterans of the struggle. The difference between them and any other ANC member is that they’re wearing a military uniform. They are, in that arcane ANC lexicon, deployed cadres in the army.
To expect them to stay in their military lane, as it were, is to require them to shed a part of who they are and what got them where they are. It may be too late in the day to start drawing boundaries. That horse has bolted. Such a possibility should have been foreseen in 1994 when, for political convenience, liberation armies and their adversaries, the old apartheid SADF, were thrown together to form the hotchpotch that is the SANDF and told to get on with it. It doesn’t seem to have panned out that way.
One can’t think of one thing the military has got right. They’ve been in the news for the wrong reasons, be it presiding over the debacle in the DRC which needlessly sacrificed the lives of young soldiers, the Lady R controversy at the height of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or military generals deliberately and almost defiantly speaking out of turn. These are all clear signs of indiscipline at the very top of the army, which is completely at odds with the conduct of any well-run professional military establishment — and such behaviour should have been dealt with firmly by the commander-in-chief. The military is, or should be, under civilian control in a democracy. But President Cyril Ramaphosa, as is often the case, has been asleep at the switch.
Maphwanya should have been dismissed immediately last year when he went to Iran to prattle about a “common goal” and told the Iranians he was “carrying a political message” from the Ramaphosa administration when the president didn’t even know he was there.
He should have been shown the door, especially given the acute problems relations with Iran are creating for the country internationally. And his minister, Angie Motshekga, should have followed him out.
He should have been shown the door, especially given the acute problems relations with Iran are creating for the country internationally. And his minister, Angie Motshekga, should have followed him out. You cannot have generals dipping their ugly paws in foreign relations without the express wishes of a civilian administration. Otherwise, you end up with a junta. But Ramaphosa saw nothing wrong with that. I guess the invitation to Iran to participate in the controversial naval drills off Cape Town — and blatantly defying Ramaphosa’s instruction to disinvite them — was Maphwanya’s way of returning a favour.
The government’s inability to rein in the generals has obviously given them wings. Lobese, another MK luminary, is a serial offender. As head of the navy, he would have been implicated in the Lady R controversy, and he’s obviously at the centre of the storm surrounding the participation of the Iranians in the drills. Last November he was at it again, questioning the patriotism of the government for underfunding the navy, which he said jeopardised national security. Alluding to comments made by KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, he alleged that those responsible for cutting the budget may be influenced by “drug cartels, illegal traders, maritime criminals or human traffickers” who benefit from a weakened navy.
Motshekga issued a statement describing Lobese’s remarks as “inappropriate, disingenuous and unfortunate”. Nothing seems to have come of it.
At the memorial service for soldiers killed in the ill-conceived campaign in the DRC, the surgeon-general, Maj-Gen Ntshavheni Peter Maphaha, criticised politicians for the country’s porous borders and accused them of turning the SANDF into a “Mickey Mouse” organisation.
These are not the comments or actions of leaders of men and women who are supposed to behave with unwavering discipline, loyalty and integrity. It seems like an all-out mutiny by a bunch of overpaid professional whingers. With an indecisive head of state and a minister clearly out of her depth, the place is ripe for the generals to engage in political mischief. The coast is clear, as it were.
The DRC fiasco is where Ramaphosa should have drawn the line. Heads should have rolled. In staying his hand, he effectively gave the generals licence to go gambolling.
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