Opinion: SANDF, the ANC’s employment force - Defence Web

Ricardo Teixeira

Thirty years ago, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) existed for one primary reason: to defend the Republic, its people and territorial integrity against external threats and, if necessary, fight and win wars on behalf of the state. That was its constitutional purpose, its strategic justification. Everything else was secondary.

Today, under the African National Congress government (ANC), the SANDF is increasingly being reframed not as a warfighting institution, but as a socio-economic intervention mechanism. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent remarks that the Department of Defence is “a partner in government efforts to curb unemployment” amount to far more than a harmless political soundbite. They represent a quiet but unmistakable admission that the South African military has drifted so far from combat readiness that the state is now searching for alternative justifications for its existence.

The SANDF is not an employment agency. It is not a youth empowerment programme, and it is not a state-funded skills incubator. Armies exist to project organised violence in defence of national interests. When political leadership begins defining military relevance primarily through job creation and skills development, it is usually because the institution can no longer credibly fulfil its actual purpose.

That is precisely where South Africa now finds itself. The government understands a deeply uncomfortable reality: the SANDF in its current form is increasingly hollowed out, underfunded, ageing, logistically degraded, and operationally constrained. The problem, however, is political. Admitting that openly would force two choices the ANC has spent years trying to avoid.

The first would be drastic personnel cuts.

The SANDF remains massively personnel-heavy relative to its operational capability. Salaries consume the overwhelming majority of the defence budget, leaving insufficient funding for training, maintenance, procurement, ammunition stockpiles, flying hours, naval deployments, or force modernisation. South Africa effectively maintains a military structure that looks large on paper but struggles to sustain even modest operations in practice.

Yet reducing headcount would carry severe political consequences. South Africa already faces catastrophic unemployment levels, especially among the youth. Cutting thousands of military posts would worsen that crisis while also alienating an important patronage and employment constituency connected to the state.

The second option would be significantly increasing the defence budget.

But that too is politically difficult. Despite repeated promises of an increase to 1.5% of GDP, no extra funding is on the horizon. Convincing the public to spend dramatically more on defence while infrastructure collapses, municipalities fail, and unemployment rises would be politically toxic. So instead, government seems to have chosen a third path: redefine the purpose of the military itself.

If the SANDF can be portrayed as a tool for combating unemployment, skills shortages, and social instability, then its bloated personnel structure becomes politically defensible. Under this logic, soldiers no longer need to justify their existence through military readiness. Their existence is justified through developmental utility.

It is a convenient reframing, but it is also profoundly dangerous, once armed forces become instruments of domestic socio-economic management rather than combat capability, military effectiveness rapidly declines further. Training priorities shift, institutional culture changes and standards erode. Operational focus becomes blurred. The military ceases to think like a fighting force and starts behaving like a state employment programme wearing camouflage.

South Africa is already seeing the consequences; the SANDF today struggles to maintain basic readiness across multiple domains. Aircraft availability remains constrained, naval maintenance backlogs persist, and bases have been left to deteriorate. Reports of equipment shortages, logistical failures, and poor soldier conditions have become routine rather than exceptional. Even basic troop support, including boots and accommodation, has repeatedly become a public controversy.

At the same time, the military is increasingly deployed internally in anti-crime operations because the South African Police Service lacks sufficient capability to stabilise key areas alone. This creates an absurd strategic contradiction: a military losing conventional combat capability while simultaneously being stretched into domestic policing roles for which it was never primarily designed.

The result is a force trapped between identities; not combat-capable, not properly structured for internal security; yet expected to compensate for broader state failure.

There is also a deeper institutional issue emerging beneath the surface. Governments often redefine military purpose when they can no longer afford genuine military capability. It is easier politically to speak about “skills development” than explain why frigates sit idle, aircraft remain grounded, and force design has become detached from strategic reality.

States that still take defence seriously do not primarily market their armed forces as unemployment mitigation tools, they market them as credible deterrents.

No serious regional military power frames its defence force primarily around labour absorption. Egypt does not. Algeria does not. Kenya does not. Even significantly poorer African states increasingly focus on combat modernisation because they recognise the deteriorating continental security environment.

South Africa, by contrast, appears to be intellectually retreating from the very concept of military power.

That retreat has consequences beyond defence itself, it usually reflects wider state decay: weakening institutions, shrinking fiscal space, declining administrative competence, and political leadership prioritising short-term stability and popularity over long-term strategic capacity.

The tragedy is that South Africa once possessed the continent’s most sophisticated military-industrial and operational defence ecosystems. Today, much of the political conversation surrounding defence revolves around preserving employment structures rather than restoring combat capability and credibility.

The ANC government is attempting to solve a political problem through rhetorical repositioning. It cannot afford to properly modernise the SANDF. It cannot politically afford large-scale force reductions. So, it seeks legitimacy by redefining military value around socio-economic contribution.

But armies cannot indefinitely substitute strategic purpose with social utility, eventually reality intrudes. A military that trains less, deploys ageing equipment, prioritises labour absorption over operational excellence, and increasingly performs civilian support functions will inevitably lose deterrent credibility.

Once that credibility disappears, rebuilding it becomes enormously expensive, politically difficult, and time-consuming. The uncomfortable truth is this: when a government begins justifying its armed forces primarily through unemployment reduction, it is often because it no longer believes those forces can credibly fight a modern war.

Ricardo Teixeira is Associate Editor at the Daily Friend. 

https://defenceweb.co.za/sa-defence-sa-defence/opinion-sandf-the-ancs-employment-force/

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.