Cape Town — SA’s strategic arms package is almost paid for but only a fraction of the jobs expected through the counter-trade agreements have been created.

This emerged yesterday when Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota answered questions in the National Assembly.

When the arms deal was signed in 1999 it was expected that the industrial participation agreements would bring R104bn into the country and would create 65000 jobs.

Lekota said that about 13 000 jobs had so far been created, which was way below the expected total with the period of payment drawing to a close.

He said that the original cost was R30bn and this total had fluctuated according to the level of the exchange rate. So far R29bn has been paid for the jet fighters, corvettes, helicopters and submarines that comprise the strategic defence package.

The minister also hinted that further arms procurements were in the offing — “we are almost at the end of the burden of payment and the country can now begin to consider fresh acquisitions”.

Lekota, in response to another question, from Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter Groenewald, said there was no way that the process of disbanding commando units would be stopped.

Groenewald had suggested that because of good work by the local commando during a farm attack investigation in Swartruggens recently that government should reconsider.

Lekota said that the constitution insisted that there should be only one institution responsible for policing in the country and that was the South African Police Service.

The commando system, where soldiers did police work, was inherited from the apartheid era, he said, and had to be disbanded.

With acknowledgements to Wyndham Hartley and Business Day.