Your report (May 21) states that the defence department has spent R203m in consultancy fees over the past two years, including R23m for the arms deal.

The parliamentary defence committee learned this week that :

• The SA National Defence Force (SANDF) has 207 generals and admirals,
• Supply arrangements are so chaotic that troops cannot obtain berets or boots, never mind essential equipment,
• Bureaucracy strangles almost all efforts to resolve personnel grievances,
• Conscription may be reintroduced in terms of the new Defence Bill (B60-2001) in the guise of "mobilisation".

Elsewhere, the British Military Advisory training Team reports that its fighting capabilities have so collapsed that the SANDF is unlikely to be able to fight its way out of the proverbial paper bag. The militarist lobby responds that it needs more money, despite budget increases of 29,4% in 2000-01, 15,2% in 2001-02 and 14,7% in 2002-03.

The SANDF over the past eight years has proved untransformable. Taxpayers will this year spend R18 414bn on the SANDF, including those consultancy fees. This amounts to R306 221 per soldier; this in a country where half the population (according to government's own report) survives on R353 per month, and less.

If the SANDF is untransformable, it is the minister's responsibility to "fix it or nix it".

With acknowledgements to Terry Crawford-Browne and Business Day.