Why Does South Africa Need Armed Forces?
22nd March 2016
Why does South Africa need armed forces to begin with? The country is a regional hyper-power. There is no earthly way in which any of South Africa’s neighbors—the microscopic Lesotho, impoverished Mozambique and Swaziland, starving Zimbabwe, and sparsely populated Namibia and Botswana—could ever threaten its national security.
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Three reasons come to mind. First, the nation’s military is a massively inefficient jobs program that soaks up some of the country’s unemployed and a patronage system that provides sinecures to the lackeys of the ANC government. Second, it offers marvelous opportunities for self-enrichment to the country’s corrupt elite, which negotiates arms purchases from foreign suppliers. Third, it is a status symbol. All serious nations have a military and so must South Africa—whether it needs one or not.
The giant waste that is the South African military is not new. It was a massive burden on the country’s economy under apartheid and, shock and horror, under Nelson Mandela. In fact, a comprehensive revamping of the country’s military was the first (yes, first) large spending project embarked upon by the newly-elected African National Congress government in 1994. One of the main beneficiaries of that titanic boondoggle was South Africa’s current president, Jacob Zuma.
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.