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The Freedom Front on Tuesday expressed concern at the state of health within the SA National Defence Force as portrayed by its latest annual report.

Said FF defence spokesman Pieter Groenewald: "The fact that nearly half of the members of the Defence Force took sick leave in one year, indicates poor discipline, low morale and costs the taxpayer money."

According to the 2002/2003 report, 42,2 percent of SANDF personnel took sick leave at a cost of R45,643,854.

More than 52 percent of the department's Public Service Act personnel took sick leave at a cost of R9,058,459. This totals R54,702,313.

In the same annual report, the Auditor-General mentioned that pressure on the defence budget negatively influenced the operational readiness, the morale and the working conditions in the SANDF.

Said Groenewald: "This confirms the low morale.

"The decision of the government to scale down defence force operations inside the country, in favour of peace keeping operations outside the country, is already taking its toll.

"Unless government acts swiftly and revises its policy regarding peace keeping operations, the situation in the defence force will deteriorate further."

The annual report was released with little fanfare about three weeks ago, a move since criticised by the Democratic Alliance.

"Government has set itself laudable principles of good governance of state departments based on openness, transparency and accountability to the public," DA defence spokesman Hendrik Schmidt said in a statement on Tuesday.

He added that the SANDF, however, had apparently decided to follow the example of its apartheid predecessor and to exclude the media and lawmakers from as much information as possible.

"A glance at the poor content of the so-called GCIS (Government Communication and Information System) meeting last week in Parliament where the media was 'briefed' on the latest developments affecting the department, in actual fact a rehashing of a previous media briefing, clearly illustrates this point," Schmidt charged.

Members of the media have also complained to MPs that they were apparently deliberately excluded by the department from last month's signing of a deal to purchase four maritime helicopters - despite them being present at another event at the same venue immediately before.

News of the long-anticipated purchase reached the media through reports from Europe, in turn based on a media release by AgustaWestland, the manufacturer of the Super Lynx 300 maritime helicopter.

Schmidt said other unclassified departmental documents have also never been formally made available to the media - and therefore the public.

"It furthermore appears that the Human Resource 2010 Strategy which has been informally released, has apparently never been formally made available to the media, despite such document being available for the past two years. So too, has the annual report of the SANDF been released without any notification thereof to the media."

Schmidt said the reluctance could be a kneejerk reaction to media reports critical of the military.

"The approach taken by the Department of Defence to prevent a reasonable disclosure of the affairs and events taking place within the Department, smacks of an autocratic styled department, fearful of having the true facts fully ventilated in the public domain," Schmidt said.

"It appears that the SANDF might have something to hide if notice is taken of the current reports which have been discussed in the Portfolio Committee and Joint Standing Committee of Defence."

The comments come a week after Lekota told journalists at Parliament that the country's defence budget had to be "urgently reviewed to prevent South Africa's defence capabilities being completely denuded." He wanted an extra R2-billion for defence. The current budget is around R21-billion or 1.6 percent of gross domestic product.

Later in the week he had to deny allegations of a long-running conflict between him and SANDF chief General Siphiwe Nyanda.

The Mail & Guardian on Friday reported Lekota and Nyanda had recently clashed over a plan, drawn up by Secretary of Defence January Masilela to transfer a number of divisions from Nyanda's command to the defence secretariat. Lekota emphatically denied the report.