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The SA National Defence Force is to establish a Warrant Officers' Academy to provide higher education to selected sergeant majors, the Department of Defence said on Wednesday.

The academy will open with 35 students on an inaugural course on August 1.

A study found a need to better train warrant officers employed at higher operational and strategic headquarters.

After a year-long course, graduates will be awarded an SA Qualifications Authority-accredited National Certificate in Multinational Safety and Security Management.

"The qualification is pitched at NQF level 5," a defence spokesman said.

The programme has three modules:

-- general military studies including military history, strategic guidance and the laws of war;

-- communications, with a focus on government communications processes; and

-- management and leadership, with an emphasis on project and human resource management and labour relations.

The Joint Warrant Officers' Programme, as the course is to be known, will take place in three residential and three distance-learning blocks.

Regular force students are expected to complete the course in a year, while reservists will do one residential phase, with its associated distance-learning component, per year.

The academy is being established in facilities renovated for the purpose at Military Base Wonderboom, just north of Pretoria.

In a departure from the SANDF norm, the academy will be commanded by a warrant officer-in-charge, not a commissioned officer.

The founding commandant is Air Force WO1 Lefu Daniel Tshabalala, 48.

Tshabalala was born at Viljoenskroon in the Free State and matriculated in Mafikeng, now in the North West.

He joined the personnel services corps of the former Bophuthatswana Defence Force in 1977 and had, by 1992, risen to regimental sergeant major of its air wing.

Tshabalala, described as an "introvert and a realist" in his official biography, was integrated into the SANDF in 1995 and in 2000 joined the directing staff of the SA Air Force College as an instructor.

Shortly afterwards he became sergeant major to the Inspector General of the SAAF.

The academy is expected to cost the department R4,540,164 in the 2005/6 financial year.

It is expected that five foreign students will be accommodated on future courses.