Yet another snapshot of the sorry South African unemployment situation – and the continuously declining defence budget – can be gleaned from figures tabled in Parliament which show more than 600 000 applications to the national defence force for its military skills development (MSD) programme over a five year period.
The figure is contained in response to a Parliamentary question posed by Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) representative Godrich Gardee to Defence and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
He was told a paltry 9 306 of the 648 039, which equates to under 1.5%, who applied were accepted for a two-year period, including basic military training (BMT); further mustering specific training such as firefighting or medical corpsman; and deployment to specific units over the five years from January 2014 to December 2019. Successful MSD volunteers go to one of the four services – air force, army, military health and navy – on completion of BMT. On completion of their 24 month stint in uniform a minority of MSD volunteers are offered regular force contracts in the SA National Defence Force (SANDF).
A hundred and eighty-three of the 9 306 who made it through selection did not complete the MSD programme.
For those not fortunate enough to land contracts their military future lies with the Reserve Force. Given their hands-on training most are welcomed by the part-time component and their skills put to service when their units are called up for service. This is usually on continental deployment as part of a South African rotation to a peacekeeping or peace support missions or Operation Corona, the national border protection and safeguarding the SANDF is under Cabinet instruction to execute.
