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Date Posted: 16-Jun-2008
Jane's Defence Weekly
Opinion: SANDF faces losing recruitment battle
The continuing personnel losses in all branches of the South African National Defence Force threaten its operational capability and combat readiness, argues Helmoed-Römer Heitman
South Africa's armed forces are at real risk of being crippled by a continuing drain of skilled and experienced personnel.
In 2007 the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) lost 910 technicians: 11 per cent of the total that had been on strength. Other key groups being lost in large numbers include pilots, mission and air traffic controllers, naval combat officers, divers and army engineers.
While this has been a problem for some time, it has now reached a stage where it is seriously affecting operational capability and readiness.
The South African Air Force (SAAF) has had to retire its Cheetah fighter before the Gripen is operational, largely because it lacks the pilots and technical personnel to simultaneously operate the Cheetah, bring the Hawk into service and prepare for the Gripen.
The South African Navy (SAN) could not deploy a submarine for an exercise with the German Navy in March because it had too few submariners to manage the delivery of the third boat and deploy one for the exercise.
The army has found it extremely difficult to maintain the equipment of its peacekeeping contingents in Africa because it lacks the technicians, leaving some units with unserviceable equipment for periods of several months.
In addition, the Military Health Service is believed to be as much as 50 per cent under strength in some disciplines.
Looking forward, it is difficult to see how the SANDF will be able to continue taking part in peacekeeping operations at current levels - three major contingents and several smaller ones - let alone meet Africa's expectations for greater involvement.
The problems besetting the SANDF are the ones that face most armed forces in times of peace, compounded by tight funding - which restricts flying, sea days and field training, resulting in boredom and frustration - and continued affirmative action. Affirmative action is a post-apartheid policy initiated to bring the racial mix of the SANDF in line with the composition of the general population. Experienced officers were encouraged to leave, many of those who stayed were side-tracked and some found themselves 'carrying' inexperienced officers who had overtaken them on the promotion ladder. That has made other options highly attractive - and there is no lack of those.
At the other end of the scale, young officers and technical staff are being lured away by industry as the most cost-effective way of meeting their employment equity targets - skilled and disciplined people that cost companies nothing to train.
The SAAF has arguably been hit the hardest, suffering a massive drain of aircrew and technical personnel, to the extent that operational capacity is restricted and the ability to bring its new aircraft into service is hampered.
It lost 253 technicians in 2006, 218 in 2007 and 73 up to April this year. The first six pilots trained on the Hawk have all left. Recent resignations include: the commanding officer and second-in-command of its only fighter and attack helicopter squadrons; the operations officer of the latter; the commanding officer of the Combat Flying School and its senior Hawk instructor; and 11 senior technical officers. The chief of the SAAF, Lieutenant General Carlo Gagiano, has repeatedly warned that the service cannot continue to absorb these losses.
Some SAAF personnel are leaving for better-paid posts in airlines or other industries. The other factor is 'poaching' by the Royal Australian Air Force. This has reached a stage where one senior officer laments that the recruiters are "calling people at their office extensions". Other officers have joined the United Arab Emirates Air Force or private military companies.
The SAN is also suffering. Chief of the Navy Vice Admiral Refiloe Mudimu has complained that shipping companies are recruiting young officers while they are still at the Naval College, hiring them as they graduate. Many of the young officers and ratings trained in Germany to operate the SAN's recently commissioned Meko-class frigates also left the service within "one or two years of coming home".
One major recruiter is Africa's expanding offshore oil industry, which needs technical staff on its rigs and personnel to operate patrol boats. Others are the Police Service (boat crews), the Ports Authority (tug masters), the Airports Company (firefighters) and many industrial companies. Several officers have joined the Royal Australian Navy, Royal New Zealand Navy and UK Royal Navy.
The army has not been as badly affected by poaching. However, it has lost personnel to the effects of the operational overstretch resulting from sustaining three battalion-group deployments with 12 under-strength battalions. Poaching has, however, cost the engineers most of their civil engineering personnel and a substantial number of other members. Another problem is a lack of mechanics and technicians, but this is in large part a result of a misguided outsourcing decision by the Department of Defence Joint Support Division, which the army would like to reverse. It has also lost officers and non-commissioned officers to private military companies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The problem has also hit South Africa's special forces (SF) badly, so much so that one senior officer with an SF background has said that South Africa has "more operators deployed than ever before - unfortunately most of them are in Iraq".
Helmoed-Römer Heitman is a JDW Correspondent, based in Cape Town
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Date Posted: 03-Oct-2008
Jane's Defence Weekly
Critical personnel shortages plague South African DoD
Helmoed-Römer Heitman JDW Correspondent
Cape Town
The South African Department of Defence (DoD) presented its annual report to parliament on 29 September, sounding an upbeat tone regarding the Defence Force meeting its operational commitments but also revealing just how critical the problem of personnel losses has become.
In overall terms defence intelligence (37.45 per cent vacancies) and joint support (30.32 per cent) are the worst off, followed by the air force (16.2 per cent) and military health service (13.41 per cent). The army is, superficially, in reasonable shape at 7.37 per cent vacancies, while the navy not too badly off at 10.15 per cent.
The real problem comes when the vacancies, the overall shortfall of which is 24.87 per cent or 4,064 personnel, are analysed in key skills areas: engineering is down by 42.75 per cent, or 112 posts, aircrew 36.95 per cent (303 posts), air space control 30.79 per cent (186 posts), air defence 27.24 per cent (264 posts), nursing 26.84 per cent (532 posts), technical 26.46 per cent (2,242 posts), artillery 18.5 per cent (239 posts), medical professional staff 14.39 per cent (231 posts) and naval combat officers and ratings 13.35 per cent (45 posts).
Bad though they are, those figures do not tell the full story. Many of the personnel in the services are relatively new and it is those with the greatest experience who are leaving. That also has serious implications for future training and mentoring.
The efforts to recruit and train new technical personnel are also not yet bearing fruit to any great extent, with the air force in particular falling far short of its targets. The one exception to this is the navy, which had 551 students on 46 technical courses as compared to a target for the year of 230 students on nine courses, according to the DoD's report.
The Defence Force has also not yet been able to do much about the implosion of its reserves, with only 17,750 on strength against a planned target of 70,000. Only about 3,500 members of the territorial reserve, which is being closed down as the result of a political decision, have transferred to the conventional reserve of the army and only some 1,700 personnel joined the reserves in 2007 after completing the Military Skills Development System (MSDS) programme. The reserves who are on strength have been very active, however, with 7,900 having served some period of duty during the year, according to the report, mainly on police support tasks but also as part of the peacekeeping contingents deployed in various African countries.
The Defence Force is also finding it difficult to recruit sufficient young white people to meet the racial quotas set for it, according to Jane's sources, with only two per cent of the present MSDS intake being white, as opposed to a target of 24 per cent. This is in large part a problem of the perception - acknowledged at least by former members of the government - that there is no career future in the Defence Force for white people: and also, to some extent, for coloured or Asian personnel.
