South Africa: Ceasefire Campaign calls for reconsideration of the Defence Review

On 27 April the Defence Review Committee appointed by the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans published its draft report. That report is available at www.sadefencereview2012.org. On 14 May the Ceasefire Campaign made a submission to the Committee, criticising the draft report. That submission is available at www.ceasefire.org.za.

The presuppositions, the language and the proposals of the draft report are egregiously militarist. In particular, the proposals regarding the centralisation of power in the Ministry of Defence, the massive new arms purchase programme, the expansion of arms manufacturing capacity, and the insidious militarisation both of non-military functions and of the youth of South Africa signals a fundamental departure from our hard-won democratic state towards a military state and it opens the door to extensive corruption.

During the apartheid regime, the state made decisions for all South Africans under the assumption that they knew what was best for all and should not be questioned on policy or decisions. In the new South Africa this has changed. The people need to be able to engage with the state on matters of policy. The military jargon and technical language of the draft report makes it inaccessible to the majority.

Though the draft report pays lip-service to human-security priorities and the interests of the people, the lack of any critical review of the SANDF, the NCACC, Armscor and Denel suggests that the Committee perceives itself as the agent of the Ministry of Defence in particular and the interests of the arms–industrial complex in general, not as a body charged with upholding the interests of the people of South Africa. This impression is exacerbated by its regurgitation of uncritical and ill-founded statements about the strategic and economic value of the arms industry in general and Denel in particular, and by its selective reading of the Constitution, of threats to the security of the nation and of history.

The failure of the Committee to present a properly motivated and quantified force design and properly motivated and quantified budgetary implications, let alone alternative options, is bad enough. But the vague scare talk and the weak and incoherent arguments presented for the proposals made, particularly for massive increases in military spending, portrays a leave-it-to-us-we-know-better attitude that shows arrogance and lacks credibility. In summary the draft report recommends the use of an expensive sledgehammer to crush a non-existent flea. The risks and threats to South Africa are exaggerated. The overwhelming threats to the security of the people of South Africa are of a non-military nature. These threats require a non-military response. They require priority over the military–industrial complex in the allocation of budgetary appropriations.

In its submission, the Ceasefire Campaign has identified 56 substantive failures of the draft report. You can read them at: http://www.ceasefire.org.za/