Billions after billions of taxpayers’ funds have, over the past 20 years, been poured down the Denel drain on the Rooivalk fiasco (Rooivalk is Turkish delight for Denel, July 4). The Rooivalk attack helicopter is obsolete 1980s technology designed for the Cold War era. There is no way that the Americans will allow their Turkish minions to buy South African armaments, especially, the Rooivalk.

Denel is an apartheid-era monster that should have no place in a post-apartheid SA ­ even were it profitable. Exports of armaments to Saudi Arabia or to the US for use against Iraqi civilians, or to Turkey for use against its Kurdish community, make a mockery of South Africa’s commitment to human rights.

Yet Denel’s Shaun Liebenberg and Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin still believe that the grotesque matter of killing people for profit represents good business. With tears in their eyes, refugees from Sudan and other African countries devastated by wars complain that we South Africans are hypocrites. They explain that South Africa mediates peace agreements in Burundi, the Congo and Sudan, but also supplies the armaments that stoke those wars.

The Anglican Church in 1994 called for the disbanding of SA’s armaments industry, and for conversion of its assets to peaceful purposes. In this instance, ethics and economics have common ground. Denel makes neither economic nor ethical sense, and should be shut down as an urgent matter of national priority.

Terry Crawford-Browne
Milnerton

I cannot think who the shatteringly ignorant so-called “military analysts” (Rooivalk is Turkish delight for Denel, July 4) could have been whom your reporter quotes as having said “at the time” that “the defence ministry’s decision to buy outside the country” when acquiring the Agusta A-109 light utility helicopter “was indicative of its dissatisfaction with the Rooivalk’s capabilities”.

These are two entirely separate helicopter types with entirely different roles.

The Rooivalk is an attack helicopter, designed to find and destroy armoured vehicles, antiaircraft systems, command posts and other helicopters ­ in effect, a flying version of the Rooikat heavy armoured car. The A-109 is a light utility helicopter, designed to transport personnel and light cargo ­ in effect, a flying bakkie or minibus.

There is no connection at all between the two projects. The A-109 is being acquired to replace the Alouette III in the light utility role, the Alouette having been in South African Air Force service since the 1960s.

Surely Business Day can do better than this?

Helmoed Römer Heitman
Cape Town

With acknowledgements to Terry Crawford-Browne, Helmoed Römer Heitman and Business Day.