Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

THE Army’s General Support Base known locally as Natal Command closed at the weekend.

But while the closure represents a reduction in the army’s footprint in the city, several other smaller units will remain at the historic beachfront site.

And this means that movie mogul Anant Singh’s envisaged film studio is not about to become a reality soon.

“It is just the General Support Base Durban (GSBD) unit that is closing, not the entire base itself,” explained Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Craig-Mackie, the acting commander of the unit.

The official closure and de-commissioning of the seven-year-old GSBD took place at a special Sunset Parade last week when the last commander, Colonel Peter Kobbie, told the assembled gathering that the duties of the base would be temporarily handed over to Army Support Base in Ladysmith. “This move was necessary to meet the needs of a dynamically changing SANDF and the South African Army’s 2020 vision of repositioning itself within the SANDF as a self-supportive force preparation organisation,” he said.

New support elements will eventually replace GSBDs to give specific support, he explained.

The GSBD took over the core support functions of Natal Command Headquarters, which closed in 2000, providing logistical, and other support (such as vehicles and rations) to various Army, Air Force and medical units around the city.

The idea of the unit was to “render general support to its allocated clients so that they in turn could focus their resources and effort on their core business”.

The unit, which once had a strength of 1 100, now has 693 personnel, including 239 civilians – and all have been relocated to other units around the province. Only some 200 army staff will now be employed at the beachfront base. Other units may move in, said Craig-Mackie.

As for the plans to turn the site into a film studio, Craig-Mackie said that in terms of the Deed of Grant agreement with the city (which owns the land), the defence force had exclusive use for as long as it needed it.

“We are happy to be here and don’t have to get off at all,” said Craig-Mackie.

However, he said that the army understood the council’s requirement for the site – it has sold the 18ha site to Singh for his studio – which was in the interests of the bigger picture in Durban.

The remaining units at the beachfront base did have plans to move to the Bluff’s Military base and Merebank, where there was a satellite support base, but they did not have the funds to finance the re-location themselves at the moment, he said. It was envisaged that the move would be financed by the sale of Salisbury Island, home of the Naval Station Durban, to Transnet.

The island was to be used for future expansion projects for the port.

An army depot, a GSBD satellite, which had occupied about three-quarters of Salisbury Island, had already closed.

It is understood that one option for Salisbury Island is that it could become a car terminal, according to recent media speculation. Sources said that geo-technical surveys are currently being carried out on the soil, and a final decision on the use of the land will be based on these findings.

Navy spokeswoman, Captain Lisa Hendricks, said that while the sale of Salisbury Island had not yet been finalised, there were no plans to close the naval station.

A decision on whether the station would move had not yet been made, “if in fact it will be moving at all”, Hendricks added.