Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

EMBATTLED state arms manufacturer Denel could soon be rescued through a recapitalisation package and a return to its original home in the defence force, Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Friday.

Sisulu made the call for Denel to return to the defence family in her budget vote in the National Assembly, which was dominated by a furious row over the state of readiness of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and her refusal to give a public briefing on the matter to Parliament’s defence committee.

Denel recently asked the government for R1,7bn to get itself back on stream. In the past 10 years, R100bn of taxpayers’ money has been spent keeping government enterprises going.

When Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan recently warned that unprofitable state enterprises could be sold off commercially, she was called to Luthuli House for a meeting with African National Congress secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and the government once again committed itself to owning and rescuing them.

Sisulu told Parliament that the defence establishment “intended to negotiate Denel back into the ambit of defence” and that she had already had discussions with Hogan where she made the point that Denel should be “strategically realigned”.

“Denel is a strategic security manufacturing asset for defence and we would like to retain it as such,” Sisulu said, adding that there was a need for an exhaustive “interrogation” of the defence industry.

She said that Denel and Armscor should be examined, and said her department would examine Armscor — its procurement arm — to ensure proper management and governance.

Sisulu expressed confidence that, if Denel was brought back under the direction of the defence department, with proper command and control it could be successfully turned around.

She said that Denel was asking the government for recapitalisation and said she was “sympathetic to that request”.

She said this decision would be made by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

During the debate on her budget Sisulu came under attack from the Democratic Alliance’s shadow defence minister David Maynier who said that the public did not know about the combat readiness of the SANDF because the department of defence “won’t tell us”.

“The minister appears to be doing her level best to cover up the state of combat readiness of the SANDF,” Maynier said.

“We were told that the Department of Defence would not provide a briefing on the state of combat readiness of the defence force because the minister had not been briefed.

“But now we are told the Department of Defence will not provide a full and open briefing because it may compromise national security.”

Sisulu said Maynier’s remarks were some of the most ignorant ever heard in Parliament.

She accused him of theatrics and insisted that the only way in which such a briefing would be given to Parliament was behind closed doors so as to protect the security of the state.

Maynier responded: “We may not know all the details about the state of combat readiness of the defence force. What we do know, however, is that the defence force is in deep trouble.

“We have soldiers without vehicles; we have ships without sailors; we have planes without pilots; and we have military hospitals without doctors.

“We have soldiers in barracks, not in the field; we have ships alongside, not at sea; and we have aircraft in hangers, not in the air.

“We have an army that is overstretched; a navy which is understretched; and an air force with nothing to stretch.”