On 18 November 2025, I read an article attributed to the Chief of the SA Navy, Vice Admiral Monde Lobese, bemoaning the underfunding of the navy and the defence force in general. In his tirade, he seemed to take a dim view, suggesting that this underfunding is a consequence of malice, deliberate action, and sabotage. He terms these “unpatriotic government leaders” and “sellouts” who are turning a blind eye to maritime crime and endangering the navy and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), while pushing for privatisation. He summarises his opinion with the sentence: “As the Navy, we reject this sellout and unpatriotic decision.”
I need to state that I’m encouraged by the recent positions taken by men in uniform in our country, after Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the Provincial SAPS Commissioner for KwaZulu-Natal, took a stand alongside the Vice Admiral. I hope this does not point to uniformed men testing the waters to see how far they could go to usurp political power someday.
I do not agree with the Vice Admiral wholly. There is merit to his concern that the safety and security of the country —specifically the navy and the army —are a serious reality and threat because of underfunding. Consequently, our national security is highly compromised and vulnerable.
This situation needs to be addressed, and in doing so, many unpopular things need to be said, to be considered, and decisions taken—unpopular decisions—and that must be done without any amount of political expediency or grandstanding.
South Africa has a serious and acute “purse” problem. At face value, it would seem that we don’t have money, though the opposite is true. There’s a lot of money in SA; how we are spending or using it is what makes it seem as if we don’t have money. The source of it all lies in what I call the proliferation of political patronage.
I’m convinced, more than ever before, that our politicians have made many decisions to dispense patronage so as to curry political favour with the voting citizenry in an effort to secure and ensure their political careers. As a result, they have taken decisions with adverse consequences to the purse of the country, thereby sacrificing a lot of things, key amongst them our national security. As a result, money has, in large quantities, gone to areas where under normal circumstances it should not have gone in such prodigious quantities, with corruption and seepage taking centre stage.
I attempt to elucidate a diagnosis of where I believe much of the proliferation I referred to resides:
- Government Procurement
Government procurement is one dinosaur in the room where lots of wastage is occurring, under the guise of (B)BBEE. One understands the rationale behind advancing BEE through government procurement; that said, though, there is a lot of abuse, wastage, and corrupt practices that occur in this space that have led to waste of money. When it comes to government procurement, costs are very high, even for routine things that could be done by permanent public servants, like procuring basic items such as booking flights and accommodation, uniforms, furniture, paper, etc. For these goods, service providers are used at huge profit margins when this could be avoided to save costs. I repeat: corruption is related to these transactions. This environment can be regulated by procuring only special strategic goods and services through service providers at regulated profit margins—not the permanent Christmas time we see.
I’m decidedly ignoring other wasteful activities such as government events, where huge sums of money are used on catering, tenting, PA systems, etc., to celebrate buying government vehicles or such frivolous activities—they are ubiquitous. A country with our fiscal challenges can hardly afford many of these activities and their concomitant expenses. Sadly, decision-makers love them and the vanity with which they come; it’s a frenzy and they are all competing for a space in the citizenry’s imagination via social media and other platforms. If you add other expenses public servants accrue, such as kilometre and subsistence claims that could easily be avoided if we wanted to save money, the picture becomes gloomier.
2. “Government Buildings”/Office Space
It’s ironic that I refer to this part as “Government Buildings”—nothing is as misleading, if only government truly owned its buildings. Very few government departments own their buildings and office spaces. They are sitting in privately owned buildings, mostly owned by BEE practitioners, at enormous monthly rental costs. If you were to look at this expenditure from many government departments across the land, you’d be pardoned for concluding that when some people use their heads to think, we may be using something else.
More interesting about this phenomenon is that several of these building owners are at best ill-prepared to house government departments from an occupational safety point of view. As a result, the Department of Employment and Labour is hard-pressed to “close” many of these buildings due to their failure to maintain a good occupational and safety track record—their transgressions are significant, often at huge compromise to service delivery.
This trend is also part and parcel of the political patronage arrangement that in many instances lines the pockets of decision-makers. It’s a disaster.
3. Free Social Services
I’m not well educated on the affairs of our continent, especially when it comes to the social safety net we have created in our country compared to what prevails in Africa. That said, I would not be completely surprised if per capita we were the biggest spenders on social welfare in Africa.
I know a little about what happens next door in Lesotho and Botswana as examples. It is putting it mildly to say our extravagance in this regard is appalling, especially if you know that even foreign nationals have found a way to sneak into these expenses as undeserving beneficiaries.
We need to set our priorities right, and like I said, tell some of the unpalatable truths that need to be said.
Something must give. I know some will be quick to chastise me for this opinion; I’m not being insensitive or oblivious to the socio-economic conditions of our people. Unemployment and poverty are rampant and wreaking havoc, and the state cannot be ignorant or could be considered complicit in a very dire situation.
That said, however, I doubt if our extent in dealing with these pandemics can be judicious. We are in the middle of a crisis as the Vice Admiral has alluded. Sadly, I think it is dangerous to allow his observations to fester without context, as one has a premonition that unless we have the correct diagnosis, we will arrive at ill-conceived conclusions threatening the very state security he is lamenting.
In our country, there is a widespread array of social grants that I concede are difficult to sustain; they are way too many for a country with such a financial deficit. They are found in all spheres of government: in health, in education, in business, in environmental management, sports, arts and culture—they are everywhere, often with very little to no return on that investment.
We give grants and loans to businesses and some people who may not even have an aptitude for business management and development. I remember learning that business management goes with risk for the entrepreneurs; you start and run a business at your own risk—and here you do it at the state’s risk.
I know this is a consequence of an intention to deal with a legacy of the past, levelling the playing field. I hold a view that in many instances these grants and loans are nothing but patronage and political expediency; there are poor or no checks and balances in place, with monitoring, evaluation, and confirmation of return on investment non-existent.
Black schools are beneficiaries of what we commonly call feeding schemes or, more formally, School Nutrition Programmes. Millions of rands are spent here to feed children, for many of whom their only meal of the day comes from school. That’s our sad reality.
One wonders about the amount of circumspection that exists as this is done. Though this kind of critique is often met with serious evasive responses by social activists and government functionaries themselves, it provides very little to no sound explanation, especially of the seepage that is prevalent here. When you listen to many of these evasive responses, you cannot escape imagining that the gesture has political underpinnings, considerations, and patronage laden throughout it all.
I run the risk of being accused of “talking from a position of privilege.” The question remains: can we really afford all these expenses, especially if you compare them to the tax base from which they come against where we expend them, against the wastage that is there?
Due to the high unemployment levels in this country, it stands to reason that the collection base is thinner than the expenditure base. Surely cuts will be necessary, and the military/navy will be affected. I don’t think this is simply a consequence of a plan to privatise the army out of malice or selfish interest by sellouts. The Vice Admiral’s characterisation of the problem for me is mischievous, too readily casting aspersions and blame on “sellouts.” Actually, it is strong and good enough to activate unwanted actions and focus on the wrong things and wrong people, wrongly so.
I wish to bring to the reader’s attention the fact that I have not addressed health-related expenses, planned and happening, such as the National Health Insurance, free medical healthcare, free medication and antiretrovirals, and many more. Can the SA taxpayer afford all these without compromising some critical and strategic areas like state security? I doubt it.
4. Commission of Inquiry
The problem with people like me, with very little exposure, knowledge, and understanding of how the world functions, is that they are quick to arrive at ill-conceived, maybe even dangerous conclusions when they have little to no information. This is not self-deprecation.
We’ve had so many commissions over the last 30 or so years in SA at a huge cost to the taxpayer—sadly with little or no consequences at all. Such that it is very convenient to consider them a sheer waste of money. I will say no more.
5. Duplicity of State-Owned Enterprises
We have a lot of SOEs that can easily be amalgamated to focus on multiple mandates, yet we have fragmented them so much at huge costs in salaries, goods, and services. To avoid mentioning some at the exclusion of others, I would like you to take a serious look at the many Chapter 9 institutions SA has and wonder if we would not do better to amalgamate some of them and streamline operations.
Given our challenges, there’s a real need to reconsider these useful institutions against public interest and repackage them, of course, unless we are worried about the real problem of job losses and related social consequences. Tough decisions indeed.
6. Huge Legislature
Our parliament in all its permutations and configurations is huge; the provincial legislatures and local government arrangements make it worse. Would we have a poor or strong state if we were to rearrange them with the intention of prioritising resources and applying austerity measures? I strongly believe it is necessary.
I conclude that indeed we have money – all we need to do is spend it well. The many accounting officers we have and the Vice Admiral and the Navy he leads could serve us better if we made all these tough decisions without fear of losing the electorate. Otherwise, it is fair to accept that we are a welfare state bent on doing the same thing and expecting different results.
- Thabang Selemela, writes what he likes and is the author of the book titled A Conversations with the Self.
