Superficially, the funniest aspect of the ANC's governance since 1994 has been the disclosure that we do not have pilots to fly the fancy new war machines on which we have squandered enough money to care for a generation of AIDS orphans.

Defence Minister Mosioua Lekota is complaining on behalf of his generals that the Defence budget is too small to retain skilled airmen. History has no record of a military problem that, in the minds of generals, could not be solved by more money. Right now they need money to dissuade South African pilots from taking jobs in the Persian Gulf, or to persuade Saudi pilots to fly our new fighters for us (quite possibly while working also for Osama bin Laden). Otherwise the new aircraft may have to go into storage, like the old Harvards that we used to keep in boxes.

This manpower crisis is the result of careful planning, political genius allied to military method. First came the seemingly innocent review of military needs half a decade ago which won the approval of all "stakeholders" including a somnolent Opposition in Parliament. Then came the foreign arms traders the military-industrial complex, as Eisenhower called them handing out Mercedes 4x4s like cookies. Finally, it all evolved into surreptitious contracts involving Joe Modise, who, having suddenly retired, unhappily died before reaping his full reward for betraying the nation's trust.

Now we find ourselves in The Crisis: we have fabulous aircraft, but can't fly them. Unless we want all that cash (R53bn so far, is it?) to go to waste, we must cough up more money. Feed the beast!

Worse awaits. The navy, stepchild of the ancient regime, is in even worse shape as it awaits its expensive new toys. An American admiral once told me that if he simply gave his aircraft carrier to the Russians, they would take five years to learn to operate it.

Our navy, I seem to recall, recently had trouble getting a smallish yacht back from Rio. How long will it take our submariners, trained on Daphne's that were dated when we bought them 40 years ago, to master their new toys?

We could, perhaps, hire good skippers from Russia's disintegrating fleet, like the nice, competent Russian harbour master who helped me when I limped into Luderitz with a failing engine not long ago. But even Russian skippers don't come cheap.

The ground forces are less of a problem. For tank commanders we can use Soweto taxi drivers. No need to show them the brake pedal, they don't use it anyway. And they have their own guns.

Alright, enough is enough. But it needs to be observed that our government, sophisticated in many ways, turned out to be a bunch of hicks, outgunned and outwitted, when they came up against the political skills of the professional officer class. They are being locked into spending, spending, spending.

It was not by accident that General Magnus Malan ended up in Parliament. His politico-military career was launched when the Nats purged the battle-hardened World War II officers in order to clear career paths for youngsters like him.

Malan was probably among the first of the unblooded officers to go to Algeria to learn from the French, who were then masters of innovative ways to torture Arab women. He did a course at an American war college, and he eventually found himself in distant command of our forces in Angola. But mainly he practised politics, eventually devising the totalitarian "total strategy" which put the army into the townships.

Under him we developed one of the world's most over-officered armies, squatting on choice bits of seized real estate like Hoedspruit and St Lucia, and the Cape South Coast where the owners of beachfront homes were evicted to make way for Nat holiday-makers (including FW de Klerk).

Once, when they actually tried to fire their guns at St Lucia, they started an embarrassing bush fire, so they went back to politics. Our officers have been manipulating politicians for decades, and don't you forget it.

Don't forget either Paul Kennedy's warning in his best- selling "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" that nations fail when they let their military commitments exceed their productive capacity.

As we are now doing.

With acknowledgements to Business Day.