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The SANDF says it will take action against its beleaguered Inspector-General, Major-General Mxolisi Petane, for buying pool cars worth R1.8 million without permission.

Defence secretary January Masilela told members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) that Petane had “erred”.

The inspector-general made headlines recently when he appeared before a military court on sexual harassment charges.

He was acquitted due to insufficient evidence.

Masilela was forced to come to Petane’s defence when he rejected suggestion by ANC MP Gerhard Koornhof that Petane had “ordered a vehicle for himself at possibly a nice discount” at the time he bought the pool cars.

“It’s not true that the I-G himself ordered a vehicle but, indeed, for his section, he ordered five VIP vehicles to the tune of R1.8m,” said Masilela.

The unauthorised purchases were three Mercedes- Benz C130s, two Mercedes C180s, one E-class and two minibuses.

They had been bought to shuttle visiting VIPs around.

“But he erred on this and we have taken action, because we are still working as the Department of Defence on a policy on pool cars,” he said.

At present, all divisions of the SANDF were relying on hired cars.

A task team had been established to work out the most cost-effective option.

Petane had “jumped the gun”. The cars had been withdrawn and were now on the department’s account.

Asked by Koornhof whe-ther action would still be taken against Petane, Masilela said: “Yes, we will. We will.”

This issue was one of several raised by Scopa as it interrogated Masilela and his entourage on why the SANDF had again received a qualified audit from the auditor-general for its 2005/06 annual report.

The department was hauled over the coals for its apparent lack of systems and management of financial processes.

Even its annual report stated it was for 2006/07 instead of 2005/06, a mistake picked up by Koornhof, to the embarrassment of Masilela and his team.

Barry Wheeler, responsible for the Defence Department account in the A-G’s office, said the root cause of the SANDF’s problems was that there were no independent management reviews and policies and procedures were not complied with.

Scopa chairman Themba Godi said non-compliance was a serious matter, especially for an organisation where orders and discipline were the name of the game.

It had to be recognised that the non-compliance was either because there were insufficient skilled personnel to carry out the task or people were failing to carry out orders.

“The department does ap-pear to have a serious problem with keeping documentation and command at unit level. Some things I have heard from this report are very scary.”

A “strong hand” was needed if systems were to be in place to achieve an unqualified report by March 31 next year.

Masilela argued that contrary to the opinions of Scopa and the A-G’s office, there was a vast improvement.