Letters

TWO BILLION rand squandered on one German submarine ("Arrival of sub completes navy's order from German shipyards", May 23) while anarchy prevails in the townships. Literally every government department is now dysfunctional, but the admirals have shiny new toys so that the navy can play war games with South American warships and/or protect fish.

It is laughable, but tragic. It's past time that Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota realised that security starts at home and that, fortuitously, there is no foreign military threat to South Africa. Does the Zimbabwe catastrophe not suggest to him that armaments compound rather than address security risks?

The xenophobic tragedy that is unfolding - and the threat it poses to our constitutional democracy - was predicted at the parliamentary Defence Review by those of us who opposed the arms deal, and subsequently exposed the corruption that it has unleashed. We pleaded then that poverty eradication was the real and urgent priority, and it remains the major security risk to South Africa's future.

The government has been criminally negligent over the past 14 years in failing to deal with the human security issues defined in section 198 (a) of the Constitution. In desperation, it now calls in the SANDF, but soldiers are trained for war, not peace. Use of troops to quell violence in townships may well compound the crisis, albeit that the SAPS has already proved equally incapable of handling the disaster.

Abolition of the SANDF and transfer of its financial resources to a volunteer Peace Corps should now be urgently considered.

It is internationally proven that human security issues of food, health, education, housing, job creation and crime prevention are prerequisites both to poverty eradication and peace.

A first step could be an immediate announcement that the arms deal's warplane contracts have been cancelled, so that financial resources can be properly redirected.

Terry Crawford-Browne
Milnerton

With acknowledgements to Terry Crawford-Browne and Cape Times.