State casts defence secrecy net wider
Date: 18 November 2010
The government's growing resort to secrecy reached Parliament's defence committee yesterday, when South African Air Force (SAAF) officials declined to give details of qualified combat pilots, saying this information would compromise national security.
This follows Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu 's refusal to provide Parliament and the public with details of President Jacob Zuma 's aircraft flights and associated costs on the grounds that the information was classified.
It also comes as MPs in another committee are struggling to process the Protection of Information Bill, which provides for a system of keeping information secret on the grounds of national security.
After a host of probing questions from MPs of all parties, the air force delegation was given an opening by African National Congress committee chairman Nyami Booi, who said they could decline to answer if they felt national security could be compromised. An astonished Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter Groenewald was the first affected when air force air capability planning director, Brig-Gen Wiseman Mbambo, declined to say how many operational combat pilots were left in the air force.
He said the issue of how many Gripen fighter pilots there were and how many had been lost to the air force "touches on national security issues".
"That is nonsense, I have asked for this information before and it has always been supplied," Mr Groenewald said. He said such information had been provided year after year in the past.
Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier said the questions should be answered and he had asked similar ones, but said perhaps deciding whether to answer them was not a decision Brig-Gen Mbambo could take and the minister should authorise him to answer them. The head of human resources at the Department of Defence, Mary Ledwaba, said the details being sought on "scarce musterings" had been put in a written reply to a parliamentary question which was en route to Parliament.
She said the reply gave details of retention allowances and the levels of technicians and pilots in the air force. It was assumed that the reply was waiting for the minister to sign it off.
Earlier in the briefing, Brig-Gen Mbambo had told the committee the air force failed to meet three of its key objectives this year because it was unable to fund the planned flying hours for its helicopters, transport and combat aircraft. He said the strategic objective of flying 11920 hours in helicopters was not achieved due to low levels of experience of ground crew and low availability of systems. In the transport and maritime surveillance category, the 11825 hours were not achieved because of financial constraints and the age of many of the aircraft.
The air combat objective of 950 hours (for Gripen and Hawk aircraft) was not achieved because of substantial underfunding. He said a "fair balance" had to be found between the air force's mandate and the funding allocated to achieve it.
This prompted Mr Maynier to observe that "one can only infer that the SAAF is in deep crisis".
Meanwhile, the auditor-general's office yesterday named and shamed departments guilty of irregular expenditure, with the Department of Defence being the worst offender. It racked up more than R1bn in irregular expenditure, accounting for 43% of the state's total bill of irregular expenditure of just less than R3,9bn in 2009-10. With Sapa
Source: Business Day
