Navy chief warns of defence cuts

CHIEF of the South African Navy, Vice Admiral Monde Lobese, has issued a stark warning that decisions to drastically reduce the South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF) workforce is effectively asking the defence force to implement its own version of what KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi once revealed before the Madlanga Commission about the closure of the Political Killings Task Team.

- JONISAYI MAROMO

“For our Cabinet to approve the reduction of the SANDF work force or strength is actually nothing far from telling us [to] implement a defence version of what General Mkhwanazi has disclosed in the Madlanga Commission with regard to the closure of the Political Killing Task Team,” Lobese said while addressing the Chief of the Navy's Prestige Charity Ball at St George's Hotel in Tshwane.

Lobese made the remarks during his Prestige Address, in which he painted a grim picture of a Navy hamstrung by years of underfunding, dwindling resources, and what he described as “an unpatriotic, sellout posture” towards national defence.

“The unpatriotic, and what appears to be a sellout posture of defunding the SA Navy and SANDF in general, leaves me with a question of whether the people behind what I would like to call ‘nonsense’ are not busy with a mission to privatise the SA Navy and the SANDE; he said.