Government’s sabotage of Denel drove SA’s experts and defence capacity overseas

The hollowing-out and bankrupting of the SA arms industry, under the leaky umbrella of Denel, was a strategic disaster we could ill afford. What was once a world-renowned and trusted supplier of defence equipment is now a rotting carcass.

This giant and strategic SOE has, like so many before it, been hollowed out and driven to the point of collapse. As a result of incompetence, mismanagement, a lack of leadership and corruption, it has morphed into a starving shell of its former self, unable to even pay its employees.

A nation is only prepared for conflict and war if its defence industry is correctly structured, innovative, functional and profitable. This is an indication of how secure it is and how efficiently it can equip and sustain its security forces when they are called to operational duty. It is also a major foreign currency earner.

The defence industry not only equips the armed forces to counter a host of diverse threats, but it also drives technical and scientific innovation. It encourages strong public-private partnerships and entrepreneurship. It generates foreign income with its export sales. It employs thousands of people and creates a multitude of new jobs.

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This presupposes that the government and its defence policies are forward-thinking and guided and directed by sound and credible political forecasting. It presupposes that there is a national strategy that is focused on security and socioeconomic strategies and plans that benefit the entire country.

Not only has the government sabotaged and wrecked this valuable strategic asset, but it has also driven our defence innovation to foreign shores, where our scientists and technologists are welcomed and in high demand.

It has, furthermore, sold off defence-related intellectual property and manufacturing facilities that took years and many millions of taxpayers’ rands to develop and refine. Those elements of Denel that were not sold off were hollowed out and neglected to the point that they cannot now be replicated.

This smacks of something very wrong in our collapsed defence industry. And the question must surely be asked: who benefits from this? It is certainly not South Africa.

The planned replacement of the Ratel infantry fighting vehicle was an expensive import that was to be built domestically. Known as the Badger, an amount of R7.6 billion has already been spent, but with no vehicles. Surely this is an indicator of something very, very wrong with what is happening in Denel and other SOEs.

Perhaps the aim is to equip the South African National Defence Force with commercial vehicles and expect them to conduct real military tasks. And while the government has focused its attention on irrelevant matters and nonentities that have no value to SA and its citizens, it has neglected Africa.

In the process, it has lost the trust of the continent, along with the ability to project any form of defence or industrial power. However, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues so, too, does the requirement for defence equipment escalate.

Africa has long been a buyer of equipment from both Russia and Ukraine and this war will most certainly result in many problems in purchasing spare parts, ammunition and support to maintain this equipment purchased from those countries.

Had Denel not been wilfully destroyed, South Africa would have a perfect opportunity on its doorstep to not only boost our defence industry, but also to play a very important role in assisting and supporting African armies to refurbish and maintain their equipment. It would have been a perfect opportunity to assist those governments with new equipment – “proudly made in South Africa” – as well.

But the government chose to ignore the plight of Africa. Instead of focusing on securing our own defence industry, along with playing an important role on the African continent, the government believed that if one drank tea and did nothing, there would never be a threat.

While the government chose to continually exercise its strategic short-sightedness, the rest of the world didn’t. Instead, our military experts, scientists, and technicians were recruited by governments to do what South Africa should have been doing.

This lack of forward thinking has opened the doors to numerous foreign defence contractors and companies. They have identified the potential problems that Africa will very soon be facing and have no doubt already been making the necessary approaches and contacts.

By failing to recognise a very important market, both the government and Denel have disadvantaged themselves, the nation, our armed forces, our economy, our industries, and the continent.

-Mashaba is a political advisor