South Africa’s defence minister under fire

The Department of Defence’s finances are in complete disarray, with its navy and air force operations impaired by underfunding and several mismanaged maintenance tenders.

This is according to the DA’s spokesperson for Defence, Chris Hattingh, who says these issues must be laid firmly at the doorstep of Minister Angie Motshekga.

Hattingh’s comments follow the minister and department’s appearance before Parliament on 30 October to brief MPs on its 2024/25 annual report.

Other MPs have also criticised the department’s performance under Motshekga. The EFF’s Carl Niehaus recently told Newsday that “there are many departments in dire straits, but this is the worst. It is in utter chaos.”

Motshekga highlighted her department’s financial woes following its budget allocation for the 2025/26 financial year. However, attributed this to underfunding not the mismanagement of funds.

“We have raised the issue of the underfunding of the defence force, which is a major existential threat to the department,” she told Newzroom Afrika.

“According to the defence force, if we are to be where we want to be, the underfunding is in the range of R30 billion. But the fundamental issue we are raising is that the baseline needs to be increased.”

However, the Auditor-General of South Africa’s (AGSA) assessment of the department’s finances seems to point to maladministration as the root of the problem.

Earlier in the month, the AGSA gave a briefing to Members of Parliament, highlighting the department’s over-expenditure in its assessment of the annual report.

The AGSA found that the Department of Defence had an over-expenditure of R2.51 billion throughout the year.

This was attributed to the allocation for employee compensation being unable to sustain personnel, and the deployment of the South African National Defence Force’s reserve forces surpassing planned man-days.

The reserve forces were the only arm of the SANDF to see an increase in deployment over the past 12 years, increasing by 37%.

On the other hand, the Air Force saw its number of flying hours drop to a ten-year low of just 247 hours, a 98% decrease since the 2012/13 financial year.

The AGSA said that poor procurement and the mismanagement of maintenance contracts are to blame for this lack of flying time.

Hattingh said earlier this year that only 16 of the Air Force’s nearly 200 planes are functional at any given time.

The Navy also saw a significant drop in the number of hours at sea — from 7,338 in 2012/13 to 3,717 in 2024/25 — a 49% decrease.

This was primarily attributed to the department’s lack of funding for mid-life upgrades to its four frigates and two submarines.

“For seven years, the four frigates – SAS Amatola, SAS Isandlwana, SAS Spioenkop, and SAS Mendi – have been virtually non-operational,” Hattingh said.

“The projects were grossly mismanaged, breaking procurement rules and causing massive cost overruns.”

Contravening Treasury’s procurement regulations

Furthermore, the AGSA reported irregular expenditure of R138.63 million. However, it noted that this figure was incomplete, as the department did not fully record its irregular spending.

An example of this irregular expenditure is Project Kgala, a continuation of Project Thusano — a skills transfer initiative between South Africa and Cuba aimed at providing technical and maintenance services to the SANDF.

According to the AGSA, the project contravened several of the National Treasury’s procurement regulations.

These include a lack of thorough market analysis, insufficient evidence provided about other suppliers, and no declaration of interest by the department.

Several non-competitive contracts under Project Thusano were deemed irregular, amounting to over R170 million.

The AGSA noted that the reason irregular expenditure persists is that it takes an average of seven years for the department to finalise investigations into irregular procurement.

The department currently has 195 investigations in progress, while 481 cases are yet to be investigated.

Head Office Falling Apart

Not only are the Department of Defence’s finances in dire straits, but so is its head office in Pretoria, which it has failed to maintain for several years.

Videos and photos from inside the building show water pouring from the ceilings, sewage pooling in bathroom basins, and brown water coming from the taps — posing a serious occupational health and safety hazard to employees.

“Pipes are leaking, water is flooding the floors, the escalators have stopped working, and there is sewage overflowing out of the toilets. It’s a sick building,” EFF MP Carl Niehaus told Newsday.

“Many of the puddles on the floors shown in the videos have a pungent stink, so I think that some of the sewage must be leaking.”

The parliamentarian explained that MPs and staff working inside the building have brought the issues to the attention of the minister and the department’s director-general for two years.

When asked about the issue in Parliament, Motshekga agreed that the building was not in a good state.

“There are frequent wear and tears which require the department and the landlord to attend to, as stipulated in the lease agreement,” she said.

However, the issues extend beyond water and sewage leaks, as Niehaus stated that the building, which Armscor shares, lacks a filing room for its database.

“It’s just a pile of papers,” he said. “The department is also supposed to have a call centre for military veterans to call in about their issues, but there are just two cellphones to fulfil this function.”