Spare a thought for SANDF

MANDATE: WITH DIMINISHING BUDGET, ARMY SAFEGUARDS NATION

- SIPHIWE DLAMINI

I recently had the privilege of accompanying the media on a tour to visit our troops deployed as part of Operation Corona, guarding our borders.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) tries to hold at least two of these trips a year to what has become the military's longest running operation since it was launched in 2009.

Safeguarding the territorial integrity of the republic is a constitutional mandate of the SANDF.

This year we travelled north to Musina on the border with Zimbabwe and we have also been to Ladybrand on the border with Lesotho.

In fact, we have multiple places we can take journalists to because South Africa's land border is more than 4,471km long, from the mouth of the Orange River disgorging into the Atlantic on the west, across the bottom of Namibia, around Botswana to Zimbabwe and then down past Mozambique.

Let's not forget the borders we have with eSwatini and Lesotho.

We also have maritime borders, our coastline, to guard.

That's just Operation Corona, an internal operation.

We also have members in the Democratic Republic of Congo and until recently we had members in northern Mozambique, as part of the SADC Mission called Samim (SADC Mission in Mozambique) combating the threat of the Islamic State (IS)-backed insurgency in Cabo Delgado.

The SANDF also has soldiers deployed internally on a variety of roles from humanitarian, whether medical or water purification, and bridge building, to interagency support with the SAPS.