Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The dangers of underfunding Do we need a defence force? In terms of an external threat to our territorial sovereignty, not at the moment. But it's an uncertain world, and history is full of wars that were not predicted. A politician's calculation of what is in his country's best interests (or his own) is not necessarily rational, or the one that would be made for him by expert economists or political scientists. Just look at how Robert Mugabe has ruined the Zimbabwean economy.

Clausewitz, the great German philosopher of war, pointed out that war is a clash between major interests that is resolved by bloodshed that is the only way it differs from other conflicts. Statesmen through the ages have calculated that they can gain more by going to war than by remaining at peace. The fact that so often they are wrong has not prevented the risk being undertaken.

And societies are not fixed in stone. Political geography changes and stable democracies can be destabilised. Submerged issues can suddenly provoke conflict, such as ethnic hostilities, or food and water security. A balanced defence force is an insurance policy to prevent a country being taken hostage by the future. If an army is not there when you need it, it cannot simply be created from scratch.

The primary purpose of a defence force, of course, is to protect a country against attack. In the case of internal conflict unthinkable in SA at present, but not impossible in the future it is ultimately the guardian of the constitution.

But it must pay its way by taking on other useful work, notably as an instrument of foreign policy even when no obvious military threat is on the distant horizon. For SA, for instance, there is participation in African Union and United Nations tasks. Clearly this is a role for which the present SA government rightly has an appetite, and it is not one that a major continental power such as SA can easily escape if it wants to be taken seriously.

Then there is the support that only a disciplined, well-equipped, rapidly deployable defence force can provide to civil society in times of emergency, such as flooding and other natural disasters, or aviation and maritime accidents.

In theory the SA National Defence Force meets these requirements. Drawing on a long and sensible military tradition of citizen armies in SA, it is designed as a small regular force that provides continuity and training, but can be rapidly expanded as needed by the call-up of reservists.

In practice, however, the SANDF's reserves have been starved for 15 years of funds, and peacekeeping commitments in Africa with their considerable logistical and human resources challenges were not planned for. To make matters worse, SA's defence budget has been declining steadily in real terms since 1994. It's true there have been substantial hardware acquisitions, especially for the navy and air force. The trouble is that this was capital expenditure, without realistic provision for the costs of manning and maintaining the new equipment. And there are fears that the imperatives of transformation are inducing too many skilled and experienced officers and men to leave the military.

As a country, we seem to be in the schizophrenic position of understanding the need for a defence force, but being unwilling to provide the money to enable it to do its job. As a result, we run the risk of ending up with an overstretched, demoralised and poorly equipped force that is, a source of political destabilisation, rather than a safeguard against it.