Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The report that an officer convicted of fraud for cheating while on his staff course has been appointed to command one of the army’s two brigades is deeply disturbing and bodes extremely ill for the army and the national defence force.

The battlefield is an exceptionally harsh and unforgiving environment, one that all too often punishes incompetence with death. The same holds true for aviation and the sea.

All three are also uncompromisingly equal-opportunity killers. It matters not whether you are white, black, male or female, or whether someone owes you something. All three kill with utter impartiality: foul up and you die.

Or, if you are an officer, someone else dies.

That is why there is no place at all in the military for incompetent officers – they kill their own soldiers.

That simple fact is well understood in all serious armed forces.

It is also well understood by the minister of defence. In November 1999 Mosiuoa Lekota in an interview by Jane’s Defence Weekly said: “To have someone placed in a command appointment who is not properly trained and qualified, would be like putting people into an aircraft flown by a half-trained pilot. It would border on criminality to entrust the lives of men and women in a war situation or in a peacekeeping operation to under-qualified leadership.”

An officer who cheated to pass a staff course was demonstrably not “properly trained or qualified” and was definitely “under-qualified”.

Why, then, has this officer been appointed to command a brigade?

Equally, there is no place in the military for dishonest officers. A task left undone and lied about, a report fudged because an officer could not be bothered to check the facts but had to get the report in on time, or equipment or stores sold on the black market will all, sooner or later, kill someone.

An officer who cheats to pass a course is clearly not honest.

Any officer found to be dishonest or incompetent should be shown the door. There is no excuse at all for retaining such people, let alone promoting them or, of all things, appointing them to command combat units.

Sadly this appointment and promotion are not entirely unique:

l In 1999 14 officers sued the Ministry of Defence to be awarded “passed staff course” certificates issued after the Army College declined to do so pending an investigation for cheating. The ministry backed down.

l A brigadier-general convicted of two cheating offences during a staff course was merely demoted to lieutenant-colonel instead of being cashiered, and was then rewarded by being sent on a foreign staff course. That is something that is normally reserved for exceptionally good officers. It is not normally used as a back door to allow a dishonest officer to once again be promoted, as happened in this case.

l An officer convicted of presenting forged degree certificates was nonetheless promoted to brigadier-general, reluctantly removed from a post after reports in the press, but still continues to hold that rank and fill a post.

l A rear-admiral convicted of assaulting a subordinate and of fraud, apparently remains in service in that rank.

There are also examples of officers who demonstrated extreme incompetence while in command appointments, who have been happily promoted since then – one of them into a critical training post.

One would also like to hear what has happened about the brigadier-general who shot to death a school friend of his daughter’s and the colonel who apparently sold off the trucks flown to Kinshasa for use by an SANDF detachment there. Are they, too, still in the defence force? Have they, too, perhaps been promoted?

One would also like to know what is being done about the reports that the SA National Defence Union chairman, a serving member of the SANDF, has threatened that “the next time we come here we will be in our uniforms and with our guns. We will lay siege to these headquarters until our demands are met”. Surely that is sedition? Is the matter being investigated? Will he be charged and brought to trial if he did make that statement?

And don’t forget the senior officer who made the country a laughing stock by having the military police seize and tow away the prototype vehicles on display at the War Museum in Johannesburg.

None of this has escaped the notice of other armed forces. One need merely speak to the defence attaches stationed in South Africa to appreciate that. The sometimes very scathing comments made by officers of other African armed forces are also witness to that.

To paraphrase comments made by some African officers: “Have you gone crazy? You are destroying a perfectly good defence force.”

Nor has this escaped the notice of serving officers, white or black, with the inevitable effect on their morale – and on the likelihood of them staying in the defence force. Good officers will not for long put up with incompetents being promoted and placed in key appointments.

They vote with their feet and leave the military.

And note the phrase “white or black” used above: it is not only white officers who are competent and who are upset by such unsuitable appointments and promotions.

There is any number of black officers who are extremely competent and professional, and who are equally unhappy.

For a time much of this was excused as being an unavoidable outcome of affirmative action. Certainly it was inevitable that some officers would be appointed to posts for which they lacked the experience, and the defence force was strong enough to absorb that.

Perhaps more to the point, many of those officers understood that, and made the effort to catch up and meanwhile drew on the advice of more experienced colleagues. While this was not an ideal situation, it was one that could be handled.

There was never, of course, any excuse to appoint or promote officers who were not willing to make the effort to become competent, or who were dishonest.

Today, 14 years after the integration of MK and Apla with the SADF and the TBVC armies (Transkei, Venda, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei) to form the SANDF, there is also no longer any reason for affirmative action to be a factor in deciding appointments and promotions.

Anyone who has not managed to muster the knowledge and experience to justify an appointment or promotion on merit, either could not be bothered to do so, or is simply too stupid to master the necessary knowledge and skills.

No such person should be kept on, let alone be appointed to key posts or be promoted to senior ranks.

Soldiers worldwide expect only two things of their officers, competence and integrity.

They want to be sure that you know what you are about, and they must to be able to trust you. They will overlook or forgive almost anything else.

Surely we owe it to our soldiers to ensure they can expect their officers to be both competent and honest?

Or do we simply not care if our soldiers die because their officers are incompetent and dishonest?