A call for justice for SA's veterans

SOUTH Africa's Military Veterans Act No. 18 of 2011 was a solemn pledge to honour those who sacrificed their lives for freedom, promising them dignity through benefits like housing, health-care, education, and pensions.

- CARL NIEHAUS

At its core lies the Military Veterans Database (MVD) to identify and register those entitled to these hard-won rights. Yet, over a decade later, this promise lies in tatters, broken by a verification process riddled with bias, bureaucratic failure, and factional malice. Overseen by the Database Verification, Cleansing and Enhancement (DVCE) under the Presidential Task Team on Military Veterans (PTT), the system has become a tool of exclusion, humiliating and denying liberation soldiers their dues.

Despite mounting complaints, Deputy President Paul Mashatile, the PTT chair, and Minister of Defence and Military Veterans' Angie Motshekga failed to act, with Motshekga's unfitness for office casting a shadow over the Department of Military Veterans. The EFF condemns this betrayal and demands urgent reform.

The MVD should be a beacon of fairness for all veterans. Instead, the DVCE's verification process is a labyrinth of inconsistency and prejudice.

Veterans of the apartheid-era South African Defence Force (SADF), armed with formal records and defence force numbers, are seamlessly registered. In stark contrast, members of non-statutory forces - heroes of the People's Liberation Army, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) - face an arduous ordeal to produce near-impossible proof of their clandestine service.