Chicago Tribune - November 6, 2003
Laurie Goering, Tribune foreign correspondent

Over the next few years, the nation also will get new helicopters, submarines and jet fighters.

But revamping the human side of South Africa's struggling defense force, still in the throes of postapartheid restructuring, isn't proving to be as easy.

Nearly 10 years after the country's first free elections, South Africa's military forces are weighed down by thousands of aging and increasingly unfit soldiers, many of them former fighters against the apartheid regime who have no job prospects outside the military. More than a fifth of the nation's forces carry the AIDS virus, which means they cannot be deployed on UN peacekeeping missions, even as demand for peacekeepers in Africa skyrockets.

South Africa's government, faced with huge costs to fight everything from poverty to AIDS, spends just 1.6 percent of its GDP on the military, less than the World Bank-recommended norm of 2 percent. As a result, military training and equipment maintenance is slipping.

"The army is overstretched and will become increasingly overstretched," warned Helmoed Heitman, a South African military analyst for Jane's Defense Weekly. With troops in Burundi and Congo and others busy with police duty guarding South Africa's borders, current deployments "are just barely sustainable," he said.

South Africa this year launched a restructuring of its defense forces. Under the plan, troop levels, which have already fallen from a high of 100,000 to 75,000 over the past decade, will be reduced further to 65,000.

The government is pushing a pension plan that would give anti-apartheid fighters--who were incorporated into the largely white South African National Defense Force in the mid-1990s--the same retirement benefits as longtime formal troops. Officials hope to encourage many of the aging fighters to retire, freeing up slots for younger, more fit and more trainable new recruits.

The military hopes to take in as many as 10,000 recruits a year between the ages of 18 and 22. At the end of two years of training, the most talented soldiers will be made part of the regular forces while others will be given a spot in the national reserves.

Under new rules for recruiting and promotion, regular enlisted troops will be required to leave active service at 28 but could go into the reserves at that time. The limitations are designed to push the average age of South Africa's foot soldiers--now 33 years--toward the international norm of 24 years.

South Africa also is rethinking the role of its military. Under apartheid, troops focused on internal security and neighboring conflicts. With South Africa facing little threat from its neighbors, the aim is peacekeeping and disaster relief.

Leadership goals

Because of the international community's assistance in helping end apartheid, "we consider it critical to participate in peace support operations," Mosiuoa Lekota, South Africa's defense minister, said recently. That role also fits in with President Thabo Mbeki's push for South Africa to be a political and economic leader on the continent.

Africa "must lead in resolving the problems of our continent," Lekota said. Peacekeeping meets "our own selfish ends" since "we need stable neighbors to be stable here."

Africa's need for peacekeepers, however, outstrips the continent's ability to provide them. South Africa, which has 3,000 soldiers in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the continent's leader in peacekeeping and one of the few countries that can afford to finance at least some of its own efforts rather than rely on international donations.

But providing peacekeepers is proving a strain. In 1994, defense planners predicted that at most two battalions of peacekeepers would be needed at any time. Now South Africa has three in the field, leaving too few troops in reserve for training and home leave.

"For every one out you need three at home: one at rest, one in training and one ready to deploy. But South Africa doesn't have that," said Henri Boshoff, a defense specialist at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. "Now a guy goes to the DRC, then to Burundi. They're going out dead tired."

Complicating the situation is the AIDS epidemic. The military estimates that 22 percent of its troops are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, a figure roughly equivalent to the rate of infection among South Africans in general. Others estimate the military infection rate is higher than the civilian rate.

The UN requires peacekeeping troops under its mandate to be HIV-negative, a situation that demands testing of troops--a sticky issue in South Africa--and the reshuffling of existing battalions to weed out the infected before deployment.

"Now if we want to send a battalion to the DRC, that battalion might have to come from 11 units," Boshoff said. "They haven't trained together. That makes it very difficult, especially for the commander."

While Lekota insists that "the defense force is not crippled" by AIDS, the military is now testing all incoming recruits and rejecting those who turn up HIV-positive, over the objections of anti-discrimination groups.

Signs of improvement

"We need a national defense force that can carry on its missions," the defense minister said. "You can't take ill people into positions in the army."

There are other signs that South Africa's military readiness may improve. Heitman, a former South African reservist, believes the government may soon boost military funding to help meet its peacekeeping and political goals on the continent. An Africa-wide rapid-reaction military force, with troops drawn from each of the continent's regions, also is in the works and by 2005.

The problems of South Africa's military "are reversible," Heitman said. "The question is whether they will be reversed."

031106
CT031101

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2003. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.

Copyright ©1980, 2003. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .