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All fourth year nursing students at the SA Military Health Service Nursing College have been sent to an Army base in the Northern Cape for two weeks of disciplinary training.

The group includes 31 students, all lieutenants in the Military Health Service, arrested this week for allegedly disobeying orders.

They were taken into custody by military police at the SA Military Health Service Training Formation, in Thaba Tshwane, on Wednesday and appeared in a military court the next day.

They were released after their appearance and will be back in court on March 20.

Spokesman Major Danny Shibambo would not comment on Thursday on the nature of the lawful command the students, from the SA Military Health Service Nursing College, were alleged to have disobeyed.

He would only say they were charged with disobeying a lawful command as contemplated by section 19(2) of the Military Disciplinary Code.

But The Star newspaper reported on Friday the group of officers refused to form a guard of honour for the Gabonese surgeon-general who is in the country visiting his South African counterpart, Lieutenant-General Vijay Ramlakan.

The nurses said that according to the SANDF's drill manual officers cannot form part of the body of a guard of honour, it is their task to command it.

The paper also reported that the arrested officers, who were detained in a detention barracks after their arrest, were all black.

It unusual for officers to be placed in a detention barracks. Traditionally officers are confined to their quarters under an age-old honour system.

Six white colleagues, who also refused to form part of the guard, were reportedly not arrested.

The Star reported that the black fourth year nursing students believed this was racist.

Ramlakan later on Friday rejected this charge and backed the action of Brigadier-General Lulu Siwisa, the general officer commanding of the military health formation, who had ordered the arrest.

He said the officers not charged were not resident at the college and had therefore not formed part of the squad that had disobeyed the lawful command.

"I therefore fully support the course of action taken by (Siwisa) who herself underwent the same military nursing training as the students concerned."

The entire group, including the students not charged, have now been sent to the SA Arm Combat Training Centre at Lohatlha for remedial disciplinary training, Ramlakan added.

"Due to an apparent failure to appreciate the principles of military discipline and the understanding of command and control in the military on the part of the students concerned, the Surgeon General has decided to institute corrective measures by providing remedial military training to all students of the fourth stage learners of the Nursing College in the aspects of soldiering life skills and discipline in the military," a statement containing Ramlakan's comments added.

A concerned parent criticised Ramlakan's move, saying the students ought to b attending to their studies.