After several days of briefings on the readiness of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) the country's parliamentary portfolio committee on defence warned on March 11 that the SANDF is in a "downward spiral of becoming inadequate to fulfil its constitutional mandate.

The committee said that SANDF had arrived at a "cross- roads" and that a decision must be taken on whether it will remain a "finance-driven defence force or a mandate-driven defence force".

The committee called for the defence budget to be increased from its current level of about 1,2 percent of GDP to 1,7 percent over the next four years and for "all possible efforts'' to ensure that the available limited resources are effectively directed towards "national defence priorities".

"In addition to the above-mentioned recommendation, a decision to modernise the SA Army is needed and this must be funded as a matter of urgency," the report said.

Senior members of the SANDF have warned repeatedly over the past few years that the forces were suffering severe strain as a result of inadequate funding. The army is too small *2 to sustain its current deployments and lacks the funding to maintain and train effectively, let alone to proceed even with all of its urgent equipment projects.

Re-equipment has stalled, resulting in the potential for block obsolescence and rising maintenance costs. The only current major projects are a partial replacement of the Ratel ICV fleet (264 Badger ICVs) and a very limited re-equipment of air defence units. The acquisition of new tactical logistic vehicles as envisioned under Project Vistula and APCs (Project Sapula) are both well behind schedule.

The air force has slipped *3 behind in maintaining systems and infrastructure and lacks the funds to pay adequate incentives to retain aircrew and technicians.

Similarly the navy lacks sufficient operating funds *4 and faces a restricted allocation for its planned offshore patrol vessel project and no funds yet programmed for joint support ships needed to facilitate short-notice deployments in Africa.

Another recommendation is that members of the Army's reserve force - which is to form the bulk of conventional - should "participate in a conventional exercise every three years, starting at unit level and building up to a combined formation exercise" and that the budget for this should be ring-fenced.

The Army last conducted a fullscale brigade exercise more than a decade ago, the recent exercises all having involved less than half a brigade's worth of forces.

Lawmakers were also keen for "greater communication between the political authority and the SANDF "to ensure adequate resources, equipment and funding to fulfill the armed forces' mandate, "especially as the SANDF is obviously being used as a foreign policy tool".

The report also addressed the need to cultivate "a sophisticated local defence industry" *5 which it considered "crucial for the SANDF *6 to maintain the necessary state of readiness in the most cost-effective manner", and urged the Department of Defence to develop a framework for the restructuring of the industry.