Speech by Deputy Minister of Defence and Military Veterans ...

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE AND MILITARY VETERANSREPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICASPEECH BY DEPUTY MINISTER OF DEFENCE AND MILITARY VETERANS,THABANG MAKWETLA ON THE OCCASION OF THE 2012 DEFENCEBUDGET VOTE, 17 MAY 2012Chairperson,Honourable Members of the Defence Portfolio-Committee and the House atlarge,Dignitaries and distinguished stake-holders in the Public Gallery,Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela says,“There are many who did not understand that to heal we had to lance the boil.There are many who still do not understand that the obedient silence of theenslaved is not the reward of peace which is our due. There are some whocannot comprehend that the right to rebellion against tyranny is the veryguarantee of the permanence of freedom.”Over the past twelve months our Ministry has continued the push to establish adedicated, efficient organization to look after military veterans, namely theDepartment of Military Veterans. The endeavour by government to intervene inaddressing the plight of military veterans is arguably among the Ministry’sforemost political priorities in the current government administration.Returning to the same subject again later Nelson Mandela said,“Reconciliation was not an afterthought or an add-on of our struggle and oureventual triumph. It was always embedded in our struggle. Reconciliation was ameans of struggle as much as it was the end goal of our struggle.”1

Honourable members, the ministry is pleased to report that parliament hassubsequently passed the Military Veterans Bill and it was assented to by thePresident and promulgated into law in December 2011. I personally wish to thankCommittees of both Houses for the work done in cleaning this legislation forapproval by parliament. Its commencement date has since been proclaimed asthe 1 st April 2012.Chairperson, the Department is committed to delivering the benefits as espousedin Section 5 of the Military Veterans Act, and will do so progressively to thoseeligible for such support. To this end, draft regulations to inform theimplementation of this Act will be brought to parliament before the end of thesecond semester.We wish to call on sister departments in the Social Development Cluster to helpexpedite the finalisation of suitable modalities for the roll-out of these benefits,which their respective departments are responsible for.Honourable Members, last year we undertook to ensure that a fully functionaldepartment is in place. By the end of March 2012, 27 senior posts mainly, werestaffed and further appointments have since been made. It is worth mentioningthat we will require an amount of R56 million to be able to staff all the posts thatare in the structure/organogram of the department, which in itself is already morethan the entire budget of the Department of Military Veterans in this financialyear.The pace at which the department’s structure is being populated is still, notsatisfactory, not withstanding the assistance solicited from the Human ResourcesDivision of the Department of Defence (DOD) in this regard.Chairperson, to use the language of the community which bore me, “re sila rehlatlegile” meaning in military language that we are firing the gun as we are2

eloading it, or we are using the gun and manufacturing its ammunition at thesame time. Time is of the essence. The needs of the military veterans are amatter of extreme urgency. As we are busy raising the structure of theDepartment of the Military Veterans from the ground, every week another soulfrom within the community of military veterans passes on, again missing theopportunity as government, to rectify the injustice this represents.Honourable Members, in rolling out the benefits intended for military veterans,the department has prioritized all military veterans of advanced age. In theprevious financial year, we had already provided them access to all our militaryhealth facilities. This preferential rolling out of relief has now been extended tohousing needs and support for dependants who are of schooling going age.In this regard, the process to pay school fees for approximately one hundred andthirty (130) dependants of military veterans is underway.Approximately two thousand five hundred (2, 500) military veterans have alreadybeen loaded on South African Military Health Services (SAMHS) system. Healthcare access cards have been issued to ‘ensure just in time’ health care servicesto all cohorts of military veterans. To monitor this service, military veterans’ helpdeskwill be introduced at all the Defence Force health facilities.Honourable Members, as the ministry, we must take this opportunity again to callon all military veterans to take serious the need to assist the Department inverifying that they are still alive and what their needs are. I also wish to thankthose military veterans who presented themselves at the military bases whichwere used as our centres during the first round of the data-capturing inDecember last year.Another round of this exercise is planned for this month and the dates will bemade public as soon as preparations have been finalized. In this regard, I wish,on behalf of the Department of Military Veterans to apologise for any inconvience3

that may have been caused by the glitches in our preliminary plans, and in thesame breath, to commend those who participated, for their patience.Honourable Members, the process of cleaning the data-base of our militaryveterans is crucial to the overall success of this government policy on militaryveterans. Should we fail to be diligent in doing it, we run the risk of either leavingout intended bona-fide recipients or allowing fraudulent abuse of this policyintervention by unscrupulous selfish individuals.It is for this reason that the Department has adopted a rigid attitude that onlythose military veterans who have came forward to verify the information on ourdata-base will be considered as we roll-out these benefits, to protect thecredibility of this department in particular, and of government in general.Chairperson, one of the impediments to the efforts mentioned above is thecontinued absence of the communications function in the already establishedbranches and units of the Department. This strategic gap in our organization isthe cause of the Department’s woes, be it in relationship to marshalling initiativeslike the consolidation of the database, or the empowering of the community of themilitary veterans with information on developments they must know about. Wehave revised the original level of the leadership post of this directorate and planto move with speed to fill it. In the interim, we have agreed to source externalprofessional services to address this crippling weakness.On this occasion last year we reported that we were in the process of assistingthe South African National Military Veterans Association (SANMVA) to launch itsprovincial structures, and that five provinces were established already. We havesubsequently concluded this process. SANMVA is a key institution inempowering military veterans with information about government activities aimedat helping them. Conceptually, it is important to point out that SANMVA in its rolehas beautiful contrasting colours like a zebra. It is both an organ of civil-society4

and a statutory body at the same time or it is neither an organ of civil society noris it an agent of the state. Which suggests that tension between the two roleswhere it manifests itself, should not be treated as a crisis but a necessarycontradiction to be constructively managed in the good of government on theone-side, and military veterans on the other. The department will, in keeping withthe legislation, ensure that we provide the necessary assistance for SANMVA tosucceed in both these roles.Two other critical institutions in the furtherance of the government policy onmilitary veterans will be established in the cause of this financial year, namely theMilitary Veterans Appeal Board and the Military Veterans Advisory Council.Chairperson, Honourable Members in their composition the military veteranscommunity and our South African National Defence Force (SANDF) consist of asignificant segment of people who are repositors of the legendary valour ofcourageous South Africans who despite being prohibited from acquiring militaryskills for all their lives, organized to challenge the might of the apartheid statemilitarily.Some of these examplary patriots like Honourable Members, Andrew Mlangeniand Nelson Diale, who are also members of the Defence Portfolio Committeecontinue to occupy seats in this parliament as democratically elected popularrepresentatives. December 16, last year marked half a century since the nativepopulace of this country rose with arms in hand to assert their right to rebelagainst their oppressor with the formation of Umkhonto We Sizwe, the formermilitary wing of the ANC. Shortly before, members of Poqo in the Eastern Cape,were arrested for the killings along the Bashee river. To mark the 50 thAnniversary of Umkhonto We Sizwe, the SANDF will organize the MedalParades where former members of this non-statutory force will receive medals torecognize their selfless service in the struggle for liberation and democracy inSouth Africa.5

The first of this parades will be organized for on the 2 nd of August 2012, theanniversary of the commencement of the Wankie Campaign in 1967 in the thenRhodesia by MK members of the Luthuli Detachment. Similar appropriatehonours will be bestowed on other members of the non-statutory formations atappropriate occasions. Through the citations of these medals the Department ofMilitary Veterans hopes to preserve this military heritage and memorialize itsglorious actors.Chairperson, the performance plan of the Department of Military Veterans in thisfinancial year is indeed ambitious with respect to heritage, understandably so,because of the zeal to salvage the story of the soldiers who fought againstapartheid before it suffers the injustice of being obliterated from our collectivenational memory.To this end, the department will be collaborating with initiatives to establishtourism “Freedom routes” nationally and regionally under the South AfricanHeritage Council (SAHC) and any other non-governmental organization involvedin such endeavours. Important under the preservation of heritage this year, willalso be work to find and restore graves of South African soldiers who were inliberation armies at home and abroad to restore their dignity. A common headstonewill be designed for this purpose. This will include the erection ofcenotaphs in the former frontlines states where many freedom fighters parished,starting with the Memorial dedicated to the matyrs of the Matola raid in Maputo,Mozamabique in conjunction with the Department of Arts and Culture.Chairperson, Honourable Members, it is with an immerse sense of anticipationand bewilderment that the Ministry has stumbled over a real opportunity toretrieve the full story and gain access to the legendary maritime tragedy of thesinking of the troopship SS Mendi just five years before we mark the centenary ofthis occurance. Since the fateful morning of the 21 st February 1917, shortly after6

05h00 next to the Isle of Wight in the English Sea waters, when SS Mendi with823 men and officers of the 5 th Battalion, South African Native Labour Corps(SANLC) bound for France sank, very little official attention was paid to thisimmense human tragedy both in South Africa and Britain. It drifted into historicalobscurity. For much of the years since Mendi sank, it has been a story which,with few exceptions, has been largely forgotten in both countries.As a Ministry we have made contacts with the English Heritage and the WessexArchaeology which can give us a real possibility to:- Place the Mendi and those aboard her when she sank within the widersocial and political context of both early 20 th Century South Africa and thesystem of labour contigents that formed part of the war effort of the BritishEmpire during World War 1 (WW1).- Consider the meaning of Mendi and its social and political context forUnited Kingdom (UK) and South Africa today, taking into account thedifferent meanings of “place” that we are likely to attach to the wreckculturally.- Consider the importance of the wreck itself as a heritage site of significantinternational value as a war-grave under UNESCO.- Consider South Africa’s sole right over the wreckage and thereforeinvestigate the implications of the vessel’s ownership.Lastly, we can sponsor dialogue on what to do to the graves of the bodies whichwashed ashore in London that are in several cemetries there.The MENDI Project will naturally be a flagship project which belongs to a broaderprogramme of revising the policy of the Department of Defence (DOD) and theDepartment of Military Veterans (DMV) pertaining many military graves of SouthAfricans which lie in countries across the globe arising from many varied conflictsof the past.7

Chairperson, Honourable members, I wish to conclude my remarks by onceagain making visible the fact that the peculiarity of the South Africangovernment’s theory and practice on support for military veterans is bound to beunderlined among others, by the heterogeneous background of its beneficiaries.It is our own concrete historical reality, its complexity must excite us rather thandiscourage us.At the end, we must and will realize a dignified, unified, empowered and selfsufficient military veterans community. Again, let us draw strength from ancientChinese wisdom and remember that, “A journey of million miles starts with onesmall step.”To return to the language that developed my thinking processes, “Tšhe ka mokake mathomo mayo ke šaetša ke re yalo.”Ke a Leboga!8