Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The South African military's ability to perform peacekeeping missions in Africa has not been compromised by a tight defence budget, says a defence commentator.

Len le Roux, the head of the Defence Programme at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, insists that, while the South African defence budget situation is serious and needs to be addressed, the army is not in crisis.

His remark followed a statement by the minister of defence, Mosiuoa Lekota, that the South African defence budget was being severely stretched by the country's increased peacekeeping commitments in Africa.

"Whilst our constitutional mandate remains the same, our increased regional commitments have brought about additional spending which brings pressures to bear on our budget allocation," he told parliament on Friday.

That spending, Lekota said "were not foreseen and cannot be accommodated".

Emphasizing the constraint, Lekota said: "It costs much more to send a soldier on a peacekeeping operation, than it does to maintain that soldier in a base in South Africa".

South Africa has around 700 peacekeepers in Burundi, and it has pledged to send another contingent to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) soon. The number of peacekeepers -- both in Burundi and Congo -- is expected reach 2,400, according to the ministry of defence sources.

Lekota said the South African National Defence Force incurred increased operating costs while on peacekeeping missions, including additional allowances for the soldiers it deployed.

He said South Africa was deploying twice as many members of the South African National Defence Force as was anticipated in the last Defence Review, while the budget requested in the same Review has not been granted. Defence has been allocated 6.74 percent of South African government expenditure this year.

"In the light of the challenges outlined above, the SANDF must be orientated so that it is attuned to meet its obligations. Training, equipment and personnel must be aligned for peace-keeping operations," Lekota said.

The army is also serving 103 international agreements which South Africa has signed with 50 countries.

South Africa is supposed to be refunded the expenditure of peacekeeping missions which it carries out under the banner of the United Nations. Even if the SANDF carries the cost of the deployment up-front, it should get the money back later.

Le Roux says the bigger problem is that the army has significant personnel and capital costs, which leaves its operating budget -which must cover the costs of its peace-keeping mission - very thin.

Defence spending is a politically sensitive issue in South Africa, which has huge social problems.

In his speech, Lekota underlined the need for African countries to invest in the security of the continent. "The war on terror inevitably would spill into our continent, a consequence of which Africa has now become one of the theatres of international terrorist activity - as witnessed by the recent attack in Morocco," he said.

"This consequence has imposed fresh obligations on African countries to equip themselves to respond to all of these threats in a world which is becoming less secure as a result of unilateral actions by the great powers.

"The Afghanistan war and the invasion of Iraq have increased the sense of unease in Africa too, thus tempting Africa to increase defence spending and to siphon off attention and resources from other areas of security like piracy, environmental degradation, disaster relief, and search and rescue" Lekota added.

"The situation today does not allow us to use the concept of a peace dividend either in defence planning or in the defence budget. We therefore need to pool our resources. To be effective, we need to deal with these problems collectively and regional collectives like the Southern African Development Community (SADC) become more important," he explained.

Lekota emphasized the need for the African Standby Force (ASF) which would perform peacekeeping missions under the auspices of the African Union (AU).

At the recent summit of the Group of Eight (G8) in Evian, France, the world's wealthy countries committed themselves to mobilising technical and financial assistance for the ASF.

Lekota said the invasion of Iraq inflicted great damage on the United Nations as a means of warding off armed conflicts.

"Whilst we agree that the integrity of the U.N. has been affected, we believe that it is not redundant. Recent events emphasize the need to speed up reform of the U.N. and the Security Council," he said.

"There is growing consensus that there is need for increased representation for Africa and the developing world. The world cannot tolerate a situation where the few most powerful nations hold the majority of the nations of the world to ransom," Lekota added.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council with vetoes - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia - do not reflect the contemporary world, he said. No African, Latin American or less developed Asian nation has a permanent voice on the council.