Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Defence minister Mosioua Lekota has dispelled calls for the retention of the Commando unit saying the country could no longer afford to have an untrained part-time military unit in a constitutional order.

The call came after some agricultural and farming organisations as well as opposition parties cried foul at the phasing out of the unit, saying the move would expose the farming community, whose security, government said, would be ensured by a new police unit.

Briefing reporters in Parliament, Cape Town, today, the chairperson of government's international relations and security cluster said the part-time armed civilians who had been accused of perpetuating gross human rights abuses against defenseless black labourers in the rural farmland, was irrelevant.

He confirmed earlier remarks by safety and security minister Charles Nqakula this week that the notorious apartheid-established unit would be replaced by a police unit, adding that members of the Commando unit were not trained in any military or police work but was merely a group of part-timers, who periodically protected the rural areas.

'A structure like that which is not under proper training, proper regulation and they don't even have arresting powers - they are just citizens armed with weapons - that they can do anything they choose to do, can not be allowed in a constitutional order,' Mr Lekota said.

The commandos who are said to have established close-knit contact with farmers, some right-wingers, have been accused of being a law unto themselves by harassing and torturing vulnerable farm labourers, who are sometimes allegedly brutally beaten and forced to eat their own faeces or even painted for unsubstantiated petty crimes.

Mr Lekota said the phasing out of the unit was part of the overall transformation of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) that would see the exit of the old guard, who would be replaced by young aspiring military officers in the navy, air force and other units.