Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The South African National Defence Force [SANDF] will withdraw from supporting the police and focus solely on defending the country's interests.

Present political thought was that soldiers should not be used to control the people who voted for the government that, in turn, employed those soldiers, said Lt-Col Robbie Roberts, officer commanding 71 Signals Unit in Goodwood.

Speaking at a special information session held on Saturday to explain the SANDF's new thinking about reserves, Roberts said it planned to raise a police force to take the place of the SANDF in law enforcement operations and once that was done, the SANDF would withdraw fully from this task.

This would spell the end of the old commando system, as it was these territorial units that mainly performed the law and order task, especially in the rural areas. "The reserves will be there to extend all the arms of the service," Roberts said.

"The signallers, as experts in combat communications, are now basically the new fifth arm of the service and we have to support all the other arms of service from the army, through the navy and the air force to the medical corps with training and personnel."

Roberts said the citizen force units, like his own, were fed by the national service system that was abolished in 1994. Before then, all white males had to perform national service of two years, after which they were passed on to a citizen force unit at which to complete their compulsory part-time service. When that system ended, citizen force units found the numbers of their members dwindled, as most people were no longer interested in serving in the military.

"We now draw volunteers from all races, but the problem we have is that many people think it is an easy way to find a job and get paid. We have to change that perception. To volunteer is to get paid only when you are called up to serve. We are not the permanent force," Roberts said.

He said the plan was to call for volunteers from the former SADF, as well as Umkhonto we Sizwe [Spear of the Nation, MK, former ANC military wing] and APLA [Azanian People's Liberation Army, former military wing of the Pan-Africanist Congress] in order to draw a potential leadership element of soldiers who had already been trained to some extent. Reserves would be considered in the same light as the permanent force for as long as they were called up to serve.