In case you've never listened to Patto, the title of this post is one of the songs off their most powerful album – Hold your Fire.
I've done a bit of work with the Department of Defence and Military Veterans, as it is correctly known. One of the issues they face is dealing with the welfare of military veterans. There is more than enough evidence that many of these people have ended up in a terrible position after 1994. The conversation that I had with them was along the lines modifying their own tender requirements to include military veterans. I sensed that they were interested in this process but they still had a massive problem identifying who a military veteran was.
The Military Veterans Affairs Act defines a veteran as any person who—
(a) either voluntarily or under conscription or call-up served as a member of
(i) the Union Defence Forces or any military force of a country allied to the former Union Government during the Great War of 1914 to 1918. World War II being the war which commenced on 6 September 1939. or the hostilities in Korea from 1950 to 1953: or
(ii) the South African Defence Force or any defence force of a territory which prior to the commencement of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 (Act No. 200 of 1993). enjoyed the status of an independent State in terms of a law of the Republic of South Africa: or
(iii) the South African National Defence Force, and has not been dishonourably discharged, is retired, or no longer serves in the South African National Defence Force and is a citizen of the Republic, and irrespective of whether any such service envisaged in subparagraph (i), (ii) or (iii) has been rendered in a permanent or in a part-time component or part-time capacity; or
(b) is a "war veteran" as defined in section 1 of the Social Assistance Act,1992 (Act No. 59 of 1992); or
(c) served as a member of any non-statutory force as defined in section 1 of the Demobilisation Act, 1996 (Act No. 99 of 1996); or
(d) belongs to any other prescribed category of military veterans
Technically I am a military veteran. However a new report has decided to change this definition. I found this in the Independent today – I'm not even going to attempt to put a hyperlink in this post because the Independent is useless at posting their publication on the web. Titled "Report calls for new measures to benefit military veterans" it discusses the report that Lindiwe Sisulu commissioned to investigate the military veteran situation. It apparently wants the government to reserve tenders for the veterans, pay their medical aid and subsidise public transport for the MV.
One of the recommendations was that the Military Veterans Affairs Act be repealed as it "no longer addresses the policy objectives of the government that pertain to military veterans affairs." The recommended new definition of a MV would then be the cleaner
anyone who retired from active service rendered to any of the military organisations, statutory or non-statutory, which were involved in all sides of South Africa's liberation war from 1960, all those who served in the SADF before 1961 and those who joined the SANDF after 1994, who want to contribute to the establishment of a more peaceful, just and free South Africa based on the principles of the constitution and the bill of rights.
There goes me as a military veteran. Not that it particularly bothers me but I think there might be a number of people who went to the army during 1961 and 1994 who might not be happy. David Williams in his book – On the border tells us that 600,000 white males were conscripted between 1966 and 1990. That is a lot of people. Based on my own experience I can happily tell you that more than 90% of those people went because they had to, not because they thought it was the right thing to do. And you cannot underestimate how this experience shaped many of our lives, both negatively and positively. It is only now after 20 years that authors like JH Thompson and Granger Korff are publishing collected or personal experiences of their military stint. The latter author wrote one of the most disturbing and powerful books that I have ever read (and I have read a lot about trench warfare in WW1). I was disturbed because, whilst I was not a parabat, I was on the border at a similar time and was exposed to the bravado and violence that made up that conflict. Korff suffered from a protracted form of post traumatic stress disorder for years afterwards (what we used to call bosbefok – see Williams' book on page 135 for a definition). Many people who went to the army suffer from a similar condition and will for life. What about those people who went in as conscientious objectors or who went to prison like Charles Bester.
Therefore I think it is wrong to summarily remove those SADF soldiers from the definition. In fact I have my doubts whether the constitution would allow this.
And the solution?
Not an easy one. Section 217 of the constitution prohibits set asides – so allocating spend to a class of people will not work; ask the city of Tshwane. However we can go back to preference points and use those as a tool.
Under the current PPPFA regulations it is possible to allocate points that support RDP goals (which are very broad) so for an 80:20 tender you could do something like this
Military veteran | 8 points |
No franchise before 1994 (which would preclude Coloureds and Indians) | 5 points |
HDI (which would include them) | 5 points |
Local supplier | 4 points |
The operational question here is whether the new regulations will accommodate something like this. Judging by what Rob Davies is suggesting – I think it might be possible to include something like this
Military veteran | 5 points |
Black person | 5 points |
BEE scorecard performance | 5 points |
Local supplier | 5 points |
And for those who have never heard Patto's "You, you point your finger".Take a listen here
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